Roboto Serif

Try Roboto Serif

Weights and styles

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

Roboto Serif 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 Roboto Serif

Roboto Serif is a serif typeface family built as a variable font for reading on screens and in print. In the specimen the serifs are sturdy and bracketed, contrast between thick and thin strokes is moderate, and the lowercase is large, so the texture stays even from Thin to Black. Four axes shape the family: weight from 100 to 900, width from 50 to 150, optical size from 8 to 144 and grade from -50 to 100. Nine named weights each come in roman and italic, 18 styles in total. The official notes present it as minimal and functional, usable even in app interfaces thanks to its span of weights, widths and optical sizes. Its 1,158 glyphs cover Latin, Latin Extended, Cyrillic and Vietnamese sets. The credits name Commercial Type and Greg Gazdowicz. Roboto Serif is published under the SIL Open Font License 1.1.

Where Roboto Serif works

Long-form articles

Optical size from 8 to 144 adjusts the drawing between small body text and large headlines within one family.

Reading apps and e-books

The grade axis, from -50 to 100, lets an app lighten or darken the text for a reading theme.

Narrow newspaper-style columns

Width down to 50 condenses a headline to fit a tight column.

Serif text inside interfaces

The official notes mention app interfaces as a use; Medium and SemiBold give labels enough weight.

Serif companion to Roboto

It carries the Roboto name and has the same Thin 100 to Black 900 span as the sans.

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 Roboto Serif

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 Roboto Serif 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: "Roboto Serif";
  src: url("/assets/fonts/RobotoSerif-Italic-VariableFont_GRAD%2Copsz%2Cwdth%2Cwght.ttf") format("truetype");
  font-weight: 100 900;
  font-style: italic;
  font-display: swap;
}
@font-face {
  font-family: "Roboto Serif";
  src: url("/assets/fonts/RobotoSerif-VariableFont_GRAD%2Copsz%2Cwdth%2Cwght.ttf") format("truetype");
  font-weight: 100 900;
  font-style: normal;
  font-display: swap;
}

body {
  font-family: "Roboto Serif", serif;
}

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

Things to know

Width goes both ways

The default width is 100; the axis condenses to 50 and extends to 150.

Optical size default is 20

The opsz axis runs from 8 to 144 and sits at 20 unless the application sets it.

Two variable files

Roman and italic are separate files, each with all four axes.

FAQs

Collections with Roboto Serif

• 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.

• Type systems with matching sans, serif and mono families

  Families designed to be used together: a sans, a serif or slab and often a monospace that share proportions, weights and character.

Similar fonts

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