Font families with nine weights and italics
Complete families running from Thin to Black with an italic for every weight: eighteen styles for a full typographic system.
Thin to Black
The standard weight scale runs from 100 to 900 in steps of a hundred: Thin, ExtraLight, Light, Regular, Medium, SemiBold, Bold, ExtraBold and Black. A family that fills every step, and supplies an italic for each, has eighteen styles. Such a family covers nearly anything a brand or a large product asks of its type.
The value lies in the steps between the obvious ones. Regular and Bold are enough for a letter. A design system wants a Medium for buttons and labels, a SemiBold for subheadings that should not compete with the title, a Light for large numerals and quotations, and a Black for a campaign headline. With all of them from one family, hierarchy can be built by weight alone, and everything shares the same proportions and spacing logic.
Some of these families are static, with eighteen separate files; others are variable, where one or two files contain the whole range and any value in between. Variable versions are lighter to serve when you use more than three or four styles. Check that the italics are true italics where that matters to you, and whether the family has condensed or companion cuts for further range.
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Poppins
Nine weights from Thin to Black, each with an italic, as 18 static files.
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Work Sans
Nine weights with italics on a variable axis from 100 to 900.
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Inter
Nine weights with italics and a variable weight axis from 100 to 900, in a screen sans.
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Raleway
Nine weights with italics on a variable axis, with Cyrillic.
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Jost
A variable weight axis from Thin 100 to Black 900 with italics, in a geometric sans.
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Barlow
Nine weights with italics as static files; condensed and semi-condensed sister families share the design.
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Fira Sans
Thin to Black with an italic for every weight, as static files, in Latin, Cyrillic and Greek.
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Kanit
Thin 100 to Black 900 with italics as 18 static files, covering Latin, Thai and Vietnamese.
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Prompt
Nine weights with italics, as static files, in a wide geometric design with Thai.
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Noto Sans
Nine weights with italics on a variable axis, with a width axis as well.
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Bitter
A slab serif across the full range, Thin to Black, with italics, on a variable axis.
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Libre Franklin
Nine weights with italics on a variable axis, with Cyrillic.
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Urbanist
Nine weights with italics in a low-contrast geometric sans, as two variable files.
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Chivo
A grotesque from Thin to Black with matching italics, on a variable axis from 100 to 900.
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Aleo
Nine variable weights with italics in a slab serif.
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Petrona
A text serif variable across nine weights with italics.
Samples load a basic Latin subset of each family. Every family here carries an open license; its page states the terms and offers the original files.
Questions about font families with nine weights and italics
Do I need all nine weights?
Rarely on one page. Most designs use three or four. A full range matters when a brand or product must cover many situations with one family.
Is it slower to load a family with many weights?
Only the styles you use are loaded. If you need more than a few, a variable font file is usually smaller than the equivalent static files combined.
What are the names of the nine weights?
Thin 100, ExtraLight 200, Light 300, Regular 400, Medium 500, SemiBold 600, Bold 700, ExtraBold 800 and Black 900.