Prompts
EN

Big Shoulders

A condensed gothic variable family created for the Chicago Design System, with weight and optical size axes.

Display 9 styles · variable by Patric King OFL

Download family 311 KB Type your own text

Big Shoulders is a condensed display sans by Patric King, created for the Chicago Design System. Big Shoulders is a variable font with a weight axis from 100 to 900 and an optical size axis from 10 to 72, nine named weights in all. It is released under the SIL Open Font License 1.1 for headlines, posters and signage.

Big Shoulders font preview card
Preview drawn by trendhub from the font files.
Designer
Patric King
Classification
Display
License
SIL Open Font License 1.1
Styles
9 9 weights
Variable font
Yes Weight 100–900, Optical size 10–72
Glyphs
1,065
Languages checked
25 see the list
Last updated
version 2.002
Used for
HeadlinesPostersBoldCondensedSignage

Official source: Google Fonts. Facts on this page were read from the font files and the source’s published data.

Try Big Shoulders

Sample text

Type over the sample to test your own words. The preview loads a Latin subset of Big Shoulders; the download contains the complete files.

Big Shoulders font specimen: alphabet, numerals and weights
Big Shoulders specimen: alphabet, numerals and weights. Image drawn by trendhub from the font files.

Weights and styles

  • Thin 100Big Shoulders Thin
  • ExtraLight 200Big Shoulders ExtraLight
  • Light 300Big Shoulders Light
  • Regular 400Big Shoulders Regular
  • Medium 500Big Shoulders Medium
  • SemiBold 600Big Shoulders SemiBold
  • Bold 700Big Shoulders Bold
  • ExtraBold 800Big Shoulders ExtraBold
  • Black 900Big Shoulders Black

Big Shoulders is a variable font: the download holds the whole weight range in one file, and the named weights above are positions on that range.

About Big Shoulders

Big Shoulders is a condensed sans serif display family made for the Chicago Design System, where it is the main typeface used to identify the city and its residents. The official notes connect its tall forms with Chicago's past: its railways, its tradition of political protest and its dance culture. In the specimen the letters are narrow and upright, round letters have straight sides and the lowercase is tall, so a long line packs into little width. The family is a variable font with two axes: weight, from 100 to 900, and optical size, from 10 to 72. Nine named weights run from Thin to Black; there is no italic. Its 1,065 glyphs cover Latin, Latin Extended and Vietnamese. Patric King is the designer, the name table gives XO Type Co as manufacturer, and the fonts are published under the SIL Open Font License 1.1.

Where Big Shoulders works

Poster and event titles
Tall, narrow letters fit a long title on one line, and Black 900 gives it weight at street distance.
Wayfinding and public signage
The family was made to give a city one typographic voice, and its straight-sided letters stay compact on narrow sign panels.
Campaign and civic graphics
Nine weights from Thin to Black cover slogans, dates and small print in a single condensed style.
Web headings at several sizes
The optical size axis from 10 to 72 adapts the drawing to a small label or a large hero line.

Glyphs

!"#$%&'()*+,-./0123456789:;<=>?@ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ[\]^_`abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz{|}~¡¢

Latin and Latin Extended characters in the preview subset; the complete family has 1,065 glyphs.

Language support

The family contains the core letters these languages are written with:

  • English
  • French
  • German
  • Spanish
  • Portuguese
  • Italian
  • Dutch
  • Swedish
  • Norwegian
  • Danish
  • Finnish
  • Icelandic
  • Catalan
  • Turkish
  • Polish
  • Czech
  • Slovak
  • Hungarian
  • Romanian
  • Croatian
  • Slovenian
  • Lithuanian
  • Latvian
  • Estonian
  • Vietnamese

Character sets found in the files: latin, latin-ext, vietnamese. The language list is a check of required letters against the font, not a promise of typographic quality in each language.

License

SIL Open Font License 1.1Copyright 2019 The Big Shoulders Project Authors (https://github.com/xotypeco/big_shoulders)

What the license allows

  • Use the fonts in personal and commercial work, in print, on the web and in apps.
  • Modify the fonts and build new versions from them.
  • Redistribute the fonts, on their own or bundled with software, as long as the license text and copyright notice go with them.

Conditions

  • The fonts cannot be sold by themselves.
  • A modified version must stay under the same license and cannot use a Reserved Font Name without the copyright holder's permission.
  • The authors' names cannot be used to promote a modified version without permission.

This is a short summary, not legal advice. The license text decides: read the full OFL text. A copy is included in the download.

Fonts that pair with Big Shoulders

Advent Pro Sans Serif

Big Shoulders is a display face for headings; Advent Pro is a sans serif family with 9 weights that can set the body text beside it.

Baskervville Serif

Big Shoulders is a display face for headings; Baskervville is a serif family with 4 weights that can set the body text beside it.

Afacad Sans Serif

Big Shoulders is a display face for headings; Afacad is a sans serif family with 4 weights that can set the body text beside it.

Suggestions come from simple rules on the records: a contrasting classification and enough weights to carry body text. They are a starting point, not a verdict.

Use Big Shoulders on the web

Download the family and host the files on your own site, then declare them in CSS. Please do not link to the files on trendhub.net: preview files here are subsets and their addresses change.

CSS, self-hosted
@font-face {
  font-family: "Big Shoulders";
  src: url("/assets/fonts/BigShoulders-VariableFont_opsz%2Cwght.ttf") format("truetype");
  font-weight: 100 900;
  font-style: normal;
  font-display: swap;
}

body {
  font-family: "Big Shoulders", sans-serif;
}

Or load it from the official source. Google Fonts serves Big Shoulders with this markup:

HTML, Google Fonts

Things to know

Two axes in one file
Weight runs from 100 to 900 and optical size from 10 to 72. The download is a single variable font; static files are available from the official source.
No italic
Big Shoulders has upright styles only.
Narrow by design
Every weight is condensed. There is no regular-width version in the family for running text.

FAQs

Is Big Shoulders free for commercial use?

Yes. Big Shoulders is published under the SIL Open Font License 1.1, which allows personal and commercial use, modification and redistribution. The font cannot be sold on its own, and modified versions stay under the same license.

Who designed Big Shoulders?

Big Shoulders was designed by Patric King; the font's name table lists XO Type Co as manufacturer. It was created for the Chicago Design System.

How many weights does Big Shoulders have?

Big Shoulders has nine named weights, from Thin 100 to Black 900, all upright. As a variable font it can also be set at any weight in between.

Is Big Shoulders a variable font?

Yes. Big Shoulders is a variable font with a weight axis from 100 to 900 and an optical size axis from 10 to 72.

Which languages does Big Shoulders support?

Big Shoulders includes the letters needed for English and other Latin-script languages such as Spanish, Polish, German, Turkish and Vietnamese. Cyrillic and Greek are not part of the character set.

Comments

No comments yet. If you have used Big Shoulders, tell other readers how it went.

Leave a comment

Comments are reviewed before they appear. Links are marked as user content.

Collections with Big Shoulders

Similar fonts

Other families in the same classification, ordered by shared use tags. All display fonts