David Libre

Try David Libre

Weights and styles

• Regular 400David Libre Regular
• Medium 500David Libre Medium
• Bold 700David Libre Bold

About David Libre

David Libre is an open version of the David Hebrew typeface. Its source is a digitisation that Monotype released in 2012, made from the large technical drawings of Ismar David; Google worked with Monotype to open three book weights, and Meir Sadan of Tel Aviv constructed the new fonts. Regular 400, Medium 500 and Bold 700 are the three static styles. The Latin letters come from Gentium, and in the specimen they are a calligraphic serif with angled stress and wedge-like serifs. OpenType features handle nikud vowel marks, and three stylistic sets offer Hebrew-height numerals, a Hebrew ampersand and an alternative sheqel sign by Ismar David. To approximate documents typed in the David shipped with Windows, the glyphs were scaled down by 12.5 percent. The 836 glyphs cover Hebrew, Latin, Latin Extended and Vietnamese under the SIL Open Font License 1.1.

Where David Libre works

Hebrew letters and official documents

The project was shaped around the needs of Israeli institutions, where David is the customary face for correspondence.

Reopening older Hebrew files

Glyphs are scaled 12.5 percent smaller to approximate documents typed in the David shipped with Windows, limiting changes in page count.

Vocalised Hebrew text

Positioned nikud marks support poetry, children’s books and teaching material that need vowel points.

Hebrew with Latin passages

Gentium-derived Latin letters were integrated for text where both scripts appear side by side.

Prices and figures in Hebrew layouts

Stylistic sets provide Hebrew-height numerals and an alternative sheqel sign.

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

Writing systems with glyphs in the family besides Latin: Hebrew. These are listed as scripts, not as a promise for every language written in them.

Character sets found in the files: hebrew, 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

Fonts that pair with David Libre

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 David Libre 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.

@font-face {
  font-family: "David Libre";
  src: url("/assets/fonts/DavidLibre-Bold.ttf") format("truetype");
  font-weight: 700;
  font-style: normal;
  font-display: swap;
}
@font-face {
  font-family: "David Libre";
  src: url("/assets/fonts/DavidLibre-Medium.ttf") format("truetype");
  font-weight: 500;
  font-style: normal;
  font-display: swap;
}
@font-face {
  font-family: "David Libre";
  src: url("/assets/fonts/DavidLibre-Regular.ttf") format("truetype");
  font-weight: 400;
  font-style: normal;
  font-display: swap;
}

body {
  font-family: "David Libre", serif;
}

Or load it from the official source. Google Fonts serves David Libre with this markup:

<link rel="preconnect" href="https://fonts.googleapis.com">
<link rel="preconnect" href="https://fonts.gstatic.com" crossorigin>
<link href="https://fonts.googleapis.com/css2?family=David+Libre:wght@400;500;700&display=swap" rel="stylesheet">

Things to know

No cantillation marks

Vowel points are supported, but the makers state that biblical cantillation marks are not.

Approximate, not exact, compatibility

The size adjustment brings layouts close to those of the system David; the makers do not promise identical line breaks.

Three weights, no italic

Regular, Medium and Bold are static upright files; there is no SemiBold and no slanted style.

Several reserved names

The license notice reserves the names Hadash, Gentium and SIL for the sources this font was built from.

FAQs

Collections with David Libre

• Fonts that support Hebrew

  Open-license families with Hebrew and Latin drawn to work together: text sans and serifs, rounded and display designs.

Similar fonts

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