New fonts for the new blog for the new year
(updated )I have spent the past two days trying to integrate a blog into my portfolio, and I have to admit it might be time to switch typefaces.
The problem is I need the letters ɐ and ɔ because Cantonese uses them (when I use IPA instead of Jyutping — and I do prefer IPA over Jyutping[Note 1]) but these letters are missing in Alegreya. In fact they seem to be missing in many open-licensed typefaces. IPA seems to be a very niche need.
Assuming that I’m going to keep using Brick for webfonts, I looked through what I have on my Mac[Note 2] and came up with a short list:
| Candidate | Designed for Latin? | Italics | Weights (4=regular, 7=bold) | Corporate affiliation | Designer | ||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | |||||
| Andika | ✓ | ✓ | SIL | ? | |||||||||
| Charis SIL | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | SIL | ? | |||||||
| Doulos SIL | ✓ | ✓ | SIL | ? | |||||||||
| FreeSerif | ✓ | ✓ | ? | ||||||||||
| Gentium Plus[Note 3] | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | SIL | ? | ||||||||
| Junicode | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | Peter S. Baker | ||||||||
| Lato | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | Łukasz Dziedzic | |
| Noto Sans | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ? | ||||||||
| Source Code Pro | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | Adobe | Paul D. Hunt | |||
| Source Sans Pro | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | Adobe | Paul D. Hunt | |||
| Y.Oz[Note 4] | n/a | ✓ | ? | Y.Oz | |||||||||
Well... what a depressingly short list? It has almost none of the faces I now routinely use. There’s also no gender balance.
In any case, considering only my Latin font needs, rationally speaking, Adobe’s Source superfamily is great — it not only has almost every weight, it also has a monospace, a sans-serif, and a serif. What I don’t like is it’s from Adobe.
Now, rationally speaking, my next best choice should be Noto, since my CJK sans-serif fonts are going to come from Noto. Again, the problem is it’s from Google.
So here we are:
For 2021,
this site is going to be set in Lato;
there will be no contrasting serif face.
Notes