Cantarell is the default

typeface A typeface (or font family) is the design of lettering that can include variations in size, weight (e.g. bold), slope (e.g. italic), width (e.g. condensed), and so on. Each of these variations of the typeface is a font. There are thousands o ...

supplied with the

user interface In the industrial design field of human–computer interaction, a user interface (UI) is the space where interactions between humans and machines occur. The goal of this interaction is to allow effective operation and control of the machine f ...

of GNOME since version 3.0, replacing

Bitstream Vera Vera is a digital typeface (computer font) superfamily with a liberal license. It was designed by Jim Lyles from the now-defunct Bitstream Inc. type foundry, and it is closely based on Bitstream Prima, for which Lyles was also responsible. It ...

and DejaVu. The font was originated by Dave Crossland in 2009. Operating systems that ship GNOME (version 3 and later versions) include this typeface family by default, such as

Fedora Linux Fedora Linux is a Linux distribution developed by the Fedora Project. Fedora contains software distributed under various free and open-source licenses and aims to be on the leading edge of open-source technologies. Fedora is the upstream source ...

, and

Red Hat Enterprise Linux Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) is a commercial open-source Linux distribution developed by Red Hat for the commercial market. Red Hat Enterprise Linux is released in server versions for x86-64, Power ISA, ARM64, and IBM Z and a desktop ...

includes the font family in its

Google Fonts Google Fonts (formerly known as Google Web Fonts) is a computer font and web font service owned by Google. This includes free and open source font families, an interactive web directory for browsing the library, and APIs for using the fonts v ...

directory, making the typeface available for use in Web sites. It is notably absent in

Ubuntu Ubuntu ( ) is a Linux distribution based on Debian and composed mostly of free and open-source software. Ubuntu is officially released in three editions: '' Desktop'', ''Server'', and ''Core'' for Internet of things devices and robots. All ...

which includes the Ubuntu typeface instead.

History

In 2009 the Cantarell fonts were initially designed by Dave Crossland during his studies of typeface design at the

University of Reading The University of Reading is a public university in Reading, Berkshire, England. It was founded in 1892 as University College, Reading, a University of Oxford extension college. The institution received the power to grant its own degrees in 192 ...

. In 2010, the fonts were chosen by GNOME for use in its 3.0 release, and the font sources were moved to GNOME's Git repository. The fonts are maintained there, allowing contributions from a variety of designers including Jakub Steiner and Pooja Saxena. In 2013 Pooja Saxena joined the GNOME foundation's “Outreach Programme for Women” internship, and was tasked with improving the design and language support. In 2014 Pooja was given financial support by Google Fonts to extend the design to

Devanagari Devanagari ( ; , , Sanskrit pronunciation: ), also called Nagari (),Kathleen Kuiper (2010), The Culture of India, New York: The Rosen Publishing Group, , page 83 is a left-to-right abugida (a type of segmental writing system), based on the ...

, but due to unavoidable vertical metrics adjustments the family was published with a new name, Cambay. In GNOME 3.28 (March 2018), the font was re-designed with two additional weights, light and extra bold.

Criticism

Cantarell initially received both criticism and support from the

free software community The free software movement is a social movement with the goal of obtaining and guaranteeing certain freedoms for software users, namely the freedoms to run the software, to study the software, to modify the software, and to share copies of the s ...

. It was argued that GNOME's use of Cantarell reduced

legibility Legibility is the ease with which a reader can decode symbols. In addition to written language, it can also refer to behaviour or architecture, for example. From the perspective of communication research, it can be described as a measure of the p ...

in desktop applications, it was not kerned and has deformed glyphs. Other users enjoyed the design, calling it “stylish and beautiful, but most importantly, crisp and easy to read.” The initial release notes stated that it was designed for legibility on screens. GNOME's choice was also criticized since Cantarell only supports some Latin languages, far fewer than the previously used

DejaVu fonts The DejaVu fonts are a superfamily of fonts designed for broad coverage of the Unicode Universal Character Set. The fonts are derived from Bitstream Vera (sans-serif) and Bitstream Charter (serif), two fonts released by Bitstream under a fre ...

. When the fonts were first published, Crossland invited others to extend the language support and this finally began in 2013 when Saxena began applying the design to the Cyrillic script. Cantarell does not include native

italics In typography, italic type is a cursive font based on a stylised form of calligraphic handwriting. Owing to the influence from calligraphy, italics normally slant slightly to the right. Italics are a way to emphasise key points in a printed ...

oblique Oblique may refer to: * an alternative name for the character usually called a slash (punctuation) ( / ) *Oblique angle, in geometry *Oblique triangle, in geometry * Oblique lattice, in geometry * Oblique leaf base, a characteristic shape of the b ...

glyphs.

References

External links

Cantarell source code

Google Fonts Cantarell

Google Fonts Cambay
{{Free and open-source typography Humanist sans-serif typefaces Open-source typefaces GNOME Typefaces and fonts introduced in 2009

History

Criticism

See also

References

External links