Literata

Try Literata

Weights and styles

• ExtraLight 200Literata ExtraLight ExtraLight Italic
• Light 300Literata Light Light Italic
• Regular 400Literata Regular Italic
• Medium 500Literata Medium Medium Italic
• SemiBold 600Literata SemiBold SemiBold Italic
• Bold 700Literata Bold Bold Italic
• ExtraBold 800Literata ExtraBold ExtraBold Italic
• Black 900Literata Black Black Italic

Literata 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 Literata

Literata is a serif family for digital text that began as the brand typeface of Google Play Books and is now in its third version. TypeTogether rebuilt it as a variable font with two axes: weight, from 200 to 900, and optical size, from 7 to 72, so one family reaches from captions to headlines. Eight weights are named, ExtraLight to Black, each with an italic, for 16 styles. In the specimen the serifs are sturdy and nearly slab-like, the contrast is low, and the heavy weights keep open counters. The fonts hold 1,707 glyphs across Latin, Greek, Cyrillic and Vietnamese. Veronika Burian and José Scaglione drew the Latin, Irene Vlachou the Greek, and Vera Evstafieva with Elena Novoselova the Cyrillic. The official notes identify this release as the print version of the family; a separate one exists for ebooks.

Where Literata works

Ebooks and reading apps

The family was created for a book-reading product, and its low contrast and sturdy serifs survive small sizes and coarse screens.

Captions to chapter titles

The optical size axis runs from 7 to 72, so footnotes, paragraphs and large titles each get a cut drawn for their size.

Greek and Cyrillic editions

Greek and Cyrillic were drawn by specialist designers within the same project, so a translated text keeps the same texture.

Editorial sites with strong heads

ExtraBold and Black give headlines weight while Regular and Medium carry the article below.

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
• Greek

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

Character sets found in the files: cyrillic, cyrillic-ext, greek, greek-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 Literata

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 Literata 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: "Literata";
  src: url("/assets/fonts/Literata-Italic-VariableFont_opsz%2Cwght.ttf") format("truetype");
  font-weight: 200 900;
  font-style: italic;
  font-display: swap;
}
@font-face {
  font-family: "Literata";
  src: url("/assets/fonts/Literata-VariableFont_opsz%2Cwght.ttf") format("truetype");
  font-weight: 200 900;
  font-style: normal;
  font-display: swap;
}

body {
  font-family: "Literata", serif;
}

Or load it from the official source. Google Fonts serves Literata 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=Literata:ital,wght@0,200..900;1,200..900&display=swap" rel="stylesheet">

Things to know

Two axes

Weight spans 200 to 900 and optical size 7 to 72; the default instance is Regular at optical size 12.

Print version

The official notes describe two versions of Literata, one for print and one for ebooks. This is the print version.

Large variable files

The two variable files total about 1.8 MB as downloaded; subsetting or the static cuts from the official source reduce that for web use.

FAQs

Collections with Literata

• Serif fonts for long reading on screens

  Text serifs drawn for screens or for long reading: large x-heights, moderate contrast and real italics for articles, blogs and documentation.

• Variable fonts with an optical size axis

  Variable families that redraw themselves for the size they are set at: sturdier and looser when small, finer and tighter when large.

Similar fonts

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