Source Serif 4

Try Source Serif 4

Weights and styles

• ExtraLight 200Source Serif 4 ExtraLight ExtraLight Italic
• Light 300Source Serif 4 Light Light Italic
• Regular 400Source Serif 4 Regular Italic
• Medium 500Source Serif 4 Medium Medium Italic
• SemiBold 600Source Serif 4 SemiBold SemiBold Italic
• Bold 700Source Serif 4 Bold Bold Italic
• ExtraBold 800Source Serif 4 ExtraBold ExtraBold Italic
• Black 900Source Serif 4 Black Black Italic

Source Serif 4 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 Serif 4

Source Serif 4 is a serif family in the transitional style, made to accompany Source Sans by matching its letter proportions and the grey value of its text. The official notes say it is loosely based on the work of the eighteenth-century punchcutter Pierre Simon Fournier and keeps some of his quirks, such as the serif at the foot of the b and the middle serif of the w, while simplifying the shapes for digital use. Frank Grießhammer designed it, and Robert Slimbach consulted on the design. The family is a variable font with two axes: weight from 200 to 900 and optical size from 8 to 60, with a default of 20. Eight named weights, ExtraLight to Black, come in roman and italic, 16 styles. The fonts hold 1,463 glyphs covering Latin, Latin Extended, Vietnamese, Cyrillic and Greek.

Where Source Serif 4 works

Long-form reading

The design aims at extended text on paper and screen, and the optical size axis thickens fine details as type gets small.

Headlines from the same family

At the upper end of the optical size axis, up to 60, the serifs and hairlines sharpen for titles.

Serif and sans systems

Proportions matched to Source Sans let the two alternate between body text and captions without a jump in size or colour.

Academic and book typography

Roman and italic in eight weights cover text, emphasis, headings and notes; Greek and Cyrillic serve citations.

News and magazine sites

SemiBold to Black set article headlines above text in Regular.

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, 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 Serif 4

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 Serif 4 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 Serif 4";
  src: url("/assets/fonts/SourceSerif4-Italic-VariableFont_opsz%2Cwght.ttf") format("truetype");
  font-weight: 200 900;
  font-style: italic;
  font-display: swap;
}
@font-face {
  font-family: "Source Serif 4";
  src: url("/assets/fonts/SourceSerif4-VariableFont_opsz%2Cwght.ttf") format("truetype");
  font-weight: 200 900;
  font-style: normal;
  font-display: swap;
}

body {
  font-family: "Source Serif 4", serif;
}

Or load it from the official source. Google Fonts serves Source Serif 4 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+Serif+4:ital,wght@0,200..900;1,200..900&display=swap" rel="stylesheet">

Things to know

Optical size from 8 to 60

The axis default is 20. Browsers apply optical sizing automatically; elsewhere set it by hand.

Two variable files

Roman and italic are separate files, each with both the weight and the optical size axis.

Details taken from Fournier

The foot serif on the b and the middle serif on the w are deliberate historical features, not errors.

FAQs

Collections with Source Serif 4

• 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.

• 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