Libre Franklin

Try Libre Franklin

Weights and styles

• Thin 100Libre Franklin Thin Thin Italic
• ExtraLight 200Libre Franklin ExtraLight ExtraLight Italic
• Light 300Libre Franklin Light Light Italic
• Regular 400Libre Franklin Regular Italic
• Medium 500Libre Franklin Medium Medium Italic
• SemiBold 600Libre Franklin SemiBold SemiBold Italic
• Bold 700Libre Franklin Bold Bold Italic
• ExtraBold 800Libre Franklin ExtraBold ExtraBold Italic
• Black 900Libre Franklin Black Black Italic

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

About Libre Franklin

Libre Franklin is a sans serif family described by its makers as an interpretation and expansion of the design Morris Fuller Benton drew in 1912. The specimen shows the traits of that grotesque model: a two-storey a and g, a compact lowercase with a tall x-height, strokes that thin slightly where curves meet stems, and a Black weight in which the counters become small. The family is a variable font with a weight axis from 100 to 900. Nine weights are named, Thin to Black, each with an italic, for 18 styles. The fonts hold 1,012 glyphs and cover Latin, Latin Extended, Cyrillic and Vietnamese. The project is led by Impallari Type, a foundry in Rosario, Argentina; the name table credits Pablo Impallari, Rodrigo Fuenzalida and Nhung Nguyen. The license is the SIL Open Font License 1.1.

Where Libre Franklin works

News and magazine headlines

ExtraBold and Black are dense and compact in the specimen, which lets a long headline fit a narrow column.

Body text beside heavy heads

Regular and Medium share the same skeleton as the Black, so text and headline can come from one family.

Thin display lines

Thin 100 and ExtraLight 200 give large titles a hairline look that the heavier cuts can then contrast with.

Russian and Vietnamese editions

Cyrillic and Vietnamese character sets are built in, so a translated edition keeps the same typeface.

Captions and data labels

The tall x-height and compact width keep short labels readable in tight spaces such as charts and photo credits.

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
• Russian
• Ukrainian
• Bulgarian

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

Character sets found in the files: cyrillic, cyrillic-ext, 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 Libre Franklin

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 Libre Franklin 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: "Libre Franklin";
  src: url("/assets/fonts/LibreFranklin-Italic-VariableFont_wght.ttf") format("truetype");
  font-weight: 100 900;
  font-style: italic;
  font-display: swap;
}
@font-face {
  font-family: "Libre Franklin";
  src: url("/assets/fonts/LibreFranklin-VariableFont_wght.ttf") format("truetype");
  font-weight: 100 900;
  font-style: normal;
  font-display: swap;
}

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

Or load it from the official source. Google Fonts serves Libre Franklin 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=Libre+Franklin:ital,wght@0,100..900;1,100..900&display=swap" rel="stylesheet">

Things to know

Default instance is Thin

The variable files open at weight 100. Software that ignores named instances will show the Thin cut until a weight is chosen.

One axis

Weight is the only variable axis. Width does not vary and there is no optical size axis.

No Greek

Latin, Cyrillic and Vietnamese are covered; Greek is not among the character sets.

FAQs

Collections with Libre Franklin

• Fonts for presentations and slides

  Sans-serif and slab-serif families that stay readable on a projector or a shared screen, with strong bolds for slide titles.

• Fonts for newspapers and magazines

  Headline serifs, compact text faces and news gothics for editorial layouts in print and on news sites.

• Grotesque sans-serif fonts

  Grotesque and neo-grotesque sans-serif families: plain, sturdy, slightly irregular workhorses for branding, editorial design and interfaces.

• 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.

Similar fonts

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