Quicksand

Try Quicksand

Weights and styles

• Light 300Quicksand Light
• Regular 400Quicksand Regular
• Medium 500Quicksand Medium
• SemiBold 600Quicksand SemiBold
• Bold 700Quicksand Bold

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

About Quicksand

Quicksand is a sans serif built from geometric shapes, with every stroke ending in a rounded cap. In the specimen the bowls of o, d and q are close to circles, the a is one-storey, and the capital Q finishes in a wavy tail. The official notes describe a face made for display use that stays legible at small sizes. The family is one variable font whose weight axis runs from 300 to 700, with five named weights: Light, Regular, Medium, SemiBold and Bold. There is no italic. Its 808 glyphs cover Latin, Latin Extended and Vietnamese character sets. Andrew Paglinawan began the project in 2008; according to the official notes Thomas Jockin revised it in 2016 and Mirko Velimirovic turned it into a variable font in 2019. Quicksand is published under the SIL Open Font License 1.1.

Where Quicksand works

Friendly brand headings

Rounded stroke endings and near-round bowls give titles and wordmarks a soft tone, and Bold 700 keeps them solid at large sizes.

App onboarding and buttons

Medium and SemiBold hold up on buttons and short labels; the official notes say the design stays legible at small sizes.

Children's and classroom material

The one-storey a and simple round letters resemble the shapes taught in early handwriting, which suits worksheets and classroom slides.

Fine-tuned weight on the web

The 300 to 700 axis lets a stylesheet pick an in-between value such as 450 from the same file.

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

Character sets found in the files: 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 Quicksand

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 Quicksand 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: "Quicksand";
  src: url("/assets/fonts/Quicksand-VariableFont_wght.ttf") format("truetype");
  font-weight: 300 700;
  font-style: normal;
  font-display: swap;
}

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

Or load it from the official source. Google Fonts serves Quicksand 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=Quicksand:wght@300..700&display=swap" rel="stylesheet">

Things to know

No italic

Quicksand has upright styles only, so emphasis has to come from a heavier weight.

Weight stops at 700

The axis runs from Light 300 to Bold 700. There are no Thin, ExtraBold or Black styles.

One variable file

The download is Quicksand-VariableFont_wght.ttf, which holds the whole weight range.

FAQs

Collections with Quicksand

• Fonts for logos and wordmarks

  Geometric, rounded, wide and classical open-license typefaces with enough character to carry a name on their own.

• Fonts for children and early readers

  Schoolbook sans-serifs, print handwriting and rounded display faces for worksheets, picture books and classroom materials.

• Geometric sans-serif fonts

  Sans-serif families built on circles, straight lines and even strokes, from 1920s-inspired designs to current brand typefaces.

• Rounded friendly fonts for social media and apps

  Sans-serif and display families with rounded stroke ends: soft, approachable type for social posts, onboarding screens and children's brands.

Similar fonts

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