Cantarell Typeface Family

The Cantarell typeface family is a contemporary Humanist sans serif, and is used by the GNOME project for its user interface.

A​B​C​D​E​F​G​H​I​J​K​L​M​N​O​P​Q​R​S​T​U​V​W​X​Y​Z​a​b​c​d​e​f​g​h​i​j​k​l​m​n​o​p​q​r​s​t​u​v​w​x​y​z​1​2​3​4​5​6​7​8​9​0​?​!​(​)​[​]​{​}​&​ ​*​^​%​$​#​@​~

Weights & Styles

Cantarell is only distributed as a variable font, allowing you to generate unlimited variants for weight.

Download 0.303

Cantarell is available as a variable Opentype font. Source releases are available on gitlab.

History

Cantarell was originally designed by Dave Crossland as part of his coursework for the MA Typeface Design program at the Department of Typography in the University of Reading, England.

After the GNOME project adopted the typeface in November 2010, minor modifications and slight expansions were made to it over the years. Pooja Saxena initially worked on the typeface as a participant of the GNOME outreach program and later developed her own Devanagari typeface Cambay, which included a redesigned latin version of Cantarell. It was backported to the GNOME branch of Cantarell by Nikolaus Waxweiler, who also performed other janitorial tasks on it.

Given the decaying state of FontForge (arcane user interface, heaps of quirky and buggy behavior) and the very early development status of alternatives such as TruFont, Nikolaus Waxweiler started redrawing Cantarell in the proprietary and Mac-only Glyphs.app under mentorship from Jacques Le Bailly ("Baron von Fonthausen"). Later, Alexei Vanyashin and Eben Sorkin reviewed the design.

Frequently Asked Questions