# Bona Nova SC font > The small-caps cut of Bona Nova, a calligraphic serif digitised from a 1971 Polish cursive design. Bona Nova SC is the small-caps cut of Bona Nova, a serif family digitised from Bona, a cursive typeface that Andrzej Heidrich designed in 1971. Bona Nova SC has three styles, Regular, Italic and Bold, with 2,220 glyphs covering Latin, Cyrillic, Greek and Hebrew. Mateusz Machalski and Capitalics are credited, and the license is the SIL Open Font License 1.1. ## Facts - Classification: [Serif](https://trendhub.net/fonts/category/serif) - Designed by: Capitalics, Mateusz Machalski, Andrzej Heidrich - License: SIL Open Font License 1.1 (https://openfontlicense.org/open-font-license-official-text/) - Styles: 3 (Regular 400, Bold 700; with italics) - Variable font: No - Glyphs: 2220 - Character sets: arabic, cyrillic, greek, hebrew, latin, latin-ext, vietnamese - Last updated: 2025-05-30 - Official source: https://fonts.google.com/specimen/Bona+Nova+SC - Page: https://trendhub.net/fonts/bona-nova-sc - Tagged for: Headlines, Editorial, Elegant ## About Bona Nova SC Bona Nova SC is a serif typeface with a calligrapher's hand behind it. Bona Nova digitises Bona, a cursive design drawn in 1971 by Andrzej Heidrich, who also designed Polish banknotes. The revival widened the character set and added small caps, alternates and OpenType functions, and a new Regular and Bold were drawn together with Heidrich so that the cursive gained upright companions. The specimen shows light strokes that flare at their ends, slanted stress, a long sweeping tail on Q, a slender extended leg on R and old-style numerals that rise and fall like lowercase letters. The SC family is the cut named for small-capital setting. The fonts hold 2,220 glyphs spanning Latin, Latin Extended, Cyrillic, Greek, Hebrew and Vietnamese, in Regular, Italic and Bold. Mateusz Machalski is named as designer in the fonts and Capitalics as manufacturer. ## License SIL Open Font License 1.1. Copyright 2020 The Bona Nova Project Authors (https://github.com/kosmynkab/Bona-Nova) Allowed: - 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. Summary only, not legal advice. Full text: https://openfontlicense.org/open-font-license-official-text/ ## Where it works - **Book titles and chapter openings**: Flared strokes and the sweeping Q give titling lines a drawn, calligraphic character. - **Running heads and credit lines**: A small-caps cut is the conventional choice for running heads, bylines and abbreviations beside text type. - **Titling across scripts**: Cyrillic, Greek and Hebrew sets sit in the same fonts as the Latin, so a multilingual title page keeps the same look. - **Certificates and invitations**: Regular, Italic and Bold give three levels for names, descriptions and dates. ## Things to know - **Lowercase keys give small capitals**: Typing lowercase in Bona Nova SC produces small capitals. The files keep ordinary lowercase letters and swap them for small capitals through an OpenType feature that browsers and layout applications apply by default; software that ignores OpenType features shows the plain lowercase. - **No bold italic**: Bona Nova SC has Regular, Italic and Bold only. - **Old-style numerals**: The numerals in the specimen are old-style figures with ascending and descending shapes, not lining figures. ## FAQs ### Is Bona Nova SC free for commercial use? Yes. The SIL Open Font License 1.1 covers Bona Nova SC: use in personal and commercial work is free, and the files may be modified and passed on. The font may not be sold on its own, and changed versions keep the same license. ### Who designed Bona Nova SC? Bona Nova SC is credited to Capitalics, Mateusz Machalski and Andrzej Heidrich. Heidrich designed the original Bona in 1971, and the font's name table names Machalski as designer. ### How many weights does Bona Nova SC have? Bona Nova SC has two weights, Regular 400 and Bold 700, and an italic for the Regular, which makes three styles. ### What does SC mean in Bona Nova SC? SC stands for small caps. Bona Nova SC is the small-capitals cut of the Bona Nova family, whose digitisation included designing small caps for the typeface. ### Which languages does Bona Nova SC support? Bona Nova SC includes the letters needed for English and other Latin-script languages such as Polish, German, Turkish and Vietnamese, as well as Russian, Ukrainian, Bulgarian and Greek, and it carries a Hebrew character set. --- Source: https://trendhub.net/fonts/bona-nova-sc (trendhub)