# Cantarell font

> A humanist sans serif by Dave Crossland, developed for on-screen reading and built with open-source tools.

Cantarell is a humanist sans serif family that Dave Crossland designed in 2009 during his MA in Typeface Design at the University of Reading, for reading on screens. Cantarell has four styles: Regular and Bold, each with an italic. It is released under the SIL Open Font License 1.1 and suits interface text, web pages and short documents.

## Facts

- Classification: [Sans Serif](https://trendhub.net/fonts/category/sans-serif)
- Designed by: Dave Crossland
- License: SIL Open Font License 1.1 (https://openfontlicense.org/open-font-license-official-text/)
- Styles: 4 (Regular 400, Bold 700; with italics)
- Variable font: No
- Glyphs: 391
- Character sets: latin, latin-ext
- Last updated: 2025-09-05
- Official source: https://fonts.google.com/specimen/Cantarell
- Page: https://trendhub.net/fonts/cantarell
- Tagged for: Body text, Interfaces

## About Cantarell

Cantarell is a contemporary humanist sans serif developed for reading on screen; its designer, Dave Crossland, had a particular target in mind, web pages viewed on an HTC Dream phone. He drew it in 2009 while studying typeface design at the University of Reading, using only open-source software, chiefly FontForge. In the specimen the letters are wide and loosely spaced, with open shapes in a, c, e and s and strokes that vary little in thickness. The family has two weights, Regular 400 and Bold 700, each with an italic, and is not a variable font. Metadata fixes in October 2022 renamed the former Oblique style to Italic. Each font has 391 glyphs covering Latin and Latin Extended. The license is the SIL Open Font License 1.1, and the project notes invite users to extend the fonts with glyphs their own writing systems need.

## License

SIL Open Font License 1.1. Copyright 2009 The Cantarell Project Authors (https://github.com/davelab6/cantarell)

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

- **Interface text**: Wide, open letters with generous spacing stay distinct in menus, dialogs and settings lists.
- **Web pages read on phones**: The family was developed with a small mobile screen as its test case.
- **Simple documents**: Regular and Bold with their italics cover text, headings and emphasis in notes, manuals and readme-style pages.
- **Open-source projects that extend their fonts**: The designer explicitly invites users to add missing glyphs under the Open Font License, and the family was built with open tools.

## Things to know

- **Two weights**: Cantarell has Regular 400 and Bold 700 only, each with an italic.
- **Oblique became Italic**: Since the October 2022 metadata update the slanted styles are named Italic instead of Oblique.
- **Romanian is incomplete**: Latin and Latin Extended are covered, but not all letters for Romanian are present.

## FAQs

### Is Cantarell free for commercial use?

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

### Who designed Cantarell?

Cantarell was designed by Dave Crossland in 2009, during his MA in Typeface Design at the University of Reading.

### How many weights does Cantarell have?

Cantarell has two weights, Regular 400 and Bold 700. Each has an italic, for four styles.

### Is Cantarell a variable font?

No. Cantarell is not a variable font in this package; it comes as four static files.

### Which languages does Cantarell support?

Cantarell includes the letters needed for English and most Western and Central European languages, among them French, German, Spanish, Turkish, Polish and Czech. Cyrillic and Greek are not included.

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Source: https://trendhub.net/fonts/cantarell (trendhub)