Source Sans 3

Try Source Sans 3

Weights and styles

• ExtraLight 200Source Sans 3 ExtraLight ExtraLight Italic
• Light 300Source Sans 3 Light Light Italic
• Regular 400Source Sans 3 Regular Italic
• Medium 500Source Sans 3 Medium Medium Italic
• SemiBold 600Source Sans 3 SemiBold SemiBold Italic
• Bold 700Source Sans 3 Bold Bold Italic
• ExtraBold 800Source Sans 3 ExtraBold ExtraBold Italic
• Black 900Source Sans 3 Black Black Italic

Source Sans 3 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 Source Sans 3

Source Sans 3 is a sans serif family from Adobe, drawn by Paul D. Hunt to work in user interfaces; the official notes call the Source Sans design Adobe's first open source typeface family. The specimen shows slender, upright letters with open shapes in a, c, e and s, moderate width and a lowercase of medium height, the proportions of a humanist sans. The family is a variable font with one axis, weight, running from 200 to 900. Eight named weights, ExtraLight, Light, Regular, Medium, SemiBold, Bold, ExtraBold and Black, each have an italic, making 16 styles. With 2,478 glyphs the fonts cover Latin, Latin Extended, Vietnamese, Cyrillic and Greek character sets, including the extended Cyrillic and Greek ranges. The license is the SIL Open Font License 1.1, and the notice reserves the font name Source.

Where Source Sans 3 works

Application interfaces

The family was intended for user interfaces, and its open letter shapes keep menus, dialogs and form labels clear.

Documentation and help centres

Regular with its italic sets long instructions, and Source Code Pro supplies matching monospaced examples.

Websites in Latin, Cyrillic and Greek

The 2,478 glyphs cover Vietnamese, Russian, Ukrainian, Bulgarian and Greek next to Western and Central European languages.

Reports and editorial pages

Eight weights give separate cuts for body copy, subheads and large light titles, and Source Serif 4 is its serif counterpart.

Accessible body copy

Open apertures and moderate width keep paragraphs even at the 400 weight on screens.

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 Source Sans 3

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 Source Sans 3 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: "Source Sans 3";
  src: url("/assets/fonts/SourceSans3-Italic-VariableFont_wght.ttf") format("truetype");
  font-weight: 200 900;
  font-style: italic;
  font-display: swap;
}
@font-face {
  font-family: "Source Sans 3";
  src: url("/assets/fonts/SourceSans3-VariableFont_wght.ttf") format("truetype");
  font-weight: 200 900;
  font-style: normal;
  font-display: swap;
}

body {
  font-family: "Source Sans 3", sans-serif;
}

Or load it from the official source. Google Fonts serves Source Sans 3 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=Source+Sans+3:ital,wght@0,200..900;1,200..900&display=swap" rel="stylesheet">

Things to know

The default instance is ExtraLight

The variable file's weight axis defaults to 200, the thin cut shown in the specimen heading. Set font-weight explicitly.

Two variable files

One file holds the roman styles and one the italics; both run from 200 to 900.

Reserved font name

The license notice reserves the name Source, a trademark of Adobe.

FAQs

Collections with Source Sans 3

• Clean sans-serif fonts for app interfaces

  Open-license sans-serif families that stay clear in buttons, menus, tables and settings screens, with the weights an interface needs.

• Fonts for résumés and CVs

  Readable open-license serif and sans-serif families for a one- or two-page CV, with the weights and italics a document needs.

• Humanist sans-serif fonts for readable text

  Sans-serif families with open, pen-influenced letterforms that stay comfortable in paragraphs, documents and interface text.

• 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.

• Fonts that support Greek

  Open-license families with Greek glyphs beside Latin, for Greek-language sites and for mathematics, science and classics.

Similar fonts

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