Honoring women designers all year round

As designers, we make lots of choices daily. These choices are important, even if so many of them remain unseen. The easy decisions are those which have already been made and often serve to underline norms which are white, male, and uphold 'western' standards of beauty. I started to compile lists and resources that make it easier for the design community to make decisions that support women in the industry. Although these typefaces don’t represent diversity across all spectrums, they are a good place to start—and because they’re Google fonts, they’re free and accessible to all. I hope you enjoy supporting women in design well beyond Women’s History Month.

Yatra One is a Devanagari and Latin libre font inspired by the hand-painted signage of the Mumbai local railway designed by Catherine Leigh Schmidt. This heavy weight high-contrast display face preserves the idiosyncratic character of brush-painted signage by featuring angular cuts and open knots. Notably, the Latin adopts a Devanagari brush angle. A Mumbai native, Yatra offers basic Marathi alternates.”

Designed by Catherine Leigh Schmidt, a type designer based in the USA. To contribute, visit this page.

Sura is a Devanagari typeface family based on the original Latin typeface Andada, a serif typeface for text.

Andada is a text font with an organic-slab serif, hybrid style, a solid design of medium stroke contrast. This font has received an award at the 2010 Ibero-America Design Biennial. The Biennial was shown in Spain, Argentina, Chile, El Salvador, Uruguay, Bolivia, Colombia and Venezuela.”

Designed by Carolina Giovagnoli, a type designer based in Argentina. To contribute, see here.

Mogra (મોગરા) is a display typeface that supports the Gujarati and Latin scripts. With dense letterforms that borrow heavily from a broad-nibbed marker, Mogra emphasises the definitive Gujarati out-stroke with mass, weight, and flair. The implied bloating of the marker pen creates an interesting roundness that contrasts against the relatively fixed angle the pen holds.”

Design is led by Lipi Raval, a type designer based in Ahmedabad, India. To contribute, go here.

Asul can be described as a baroque humanist typeface; it has semi-serifs and it is a type revival project developed for editorial use. It is based on a typeface found in some Argentinian books and magazines from the early 20th century.”

Designed by Mariela Monsalve, a graphic and type designer from Buenos Aires, Argentina

Rakkas is single-weight display typeface that supports the Arabic and Latin scripts. The two scripts share a united style, with neither pretending to be the other, and each interesting in its own right. The Arabic design is inspired by Ruq’ah lettering on Egyptian movie posters from the 50s and 60s, and makes use of contextual alternates to emulate calligraphy. It offers different forms for many letter position and it cascades vertically, giving the user an opportunity to play. The Latin design infuses a blackletter design with informality.”

The Rakkas project is led by Zeynep Akay, a type designer based in London, UK. To contribute, check out this page.

Montaga is an Old Style font, inspired by Venetian calligraphy. Her main feature is the strong inclination in the modulation axis, that generates shapes with marked stress. This gives her a strong personality. The uppercases are slender and arrogant, and the narrowness of shapes provide optimum performance. Montaga is a work in progress and will be improved regularly. This means you can request improvements and even fund specific features if they are outside of the current scope of work."

Designed by Alejandra Rodriguez, a type designer from Mexico.

Kotta One is a new and unusual text typeface that mixes the characteristics of an italic with legibility of a roman. Kotta uses a true calligraphic construction, with a structure based on a real italic hand, not simple mechanical slanted forms.

Like Renaissance typefaces it is an independent style, not merely an accompaniment for a roman. Kotta One is also a modern style, angular and geometric, exploring the ideas of American typographer Williams Addison Dwiggins and his M-Formula. Sharp lines and strong horizontal strokes give it a rhythm that reads well in long texts.”

Designed by Ania Kruk, a Polish type designer based in Barcelona, SP.

Notable is an uppercase sans serif display font; it’s letterforms are based on those found on U.S. currency. Notable Women is an augmented reality experiment that lets anyone see 100 historic American women where they’ve historically been left out: U.S. currency.”

Designed by Eli Block (based in San Francisco, CA), Hana Tanimura (based in NY), and Noemie Le Coz (based in NY) for Notable Women, an initiative by former Treasurer of the United States, Rosie Rios.

Tulpen is a tall sans serif type, suitable for display uses in headlines and other large text.”

Designed by Naima Ben Ayed, a French graphic and type designer based in London, UK.

In addition to the typefaces, check out these resources:

How To Support Black Type Designers & Their Fonts
A great article and list of resources by Eliza Martin

Badass Libre Fonts 
by Womxn
A collection that aims at givie visibility to libre fonts drawn by women designers, who are often underrepresented

Typefaces designed by Asian women
An excel List featuring Hangul & Latin typefaces designed by Asian women

Type Choice, Political Choice
An article by Agyei Archerfor Typgraphica.org

alphabettes.org/
resources
An un-organized list of resources all related to women in type that anyone can use

typequality.com
A platform for discovering and sharing typefaces designed by women

Typography as 
a Radical Act in an Industry Ever-dominated by White Men
An article by Silas Munro about Tré Seal’s Vocal Type

Femme Type
A platform created with a purpose of intensely celebrating the work of type designers and type-focused creatives who identify as women

Fonts are a Feminist Issue
Article written by Kelly Diels

10 Brilliant Female Creatives Creating Letters Today
A directory of 10 trailblazing female designers

Fonts by Women
A list of fonts curated by Ellen Lupton for Adobe Fonts

Previous
Previous

Digital Financial Services for Farmers

Next
Next

Designing for and with Girls book