Typography
Our primary font for all materials is Open Sans, available for free embed and download at Google fonts.
Open Sans is a humanist sans serif typeface designed by Steve Matteson, Type Director of Ascender Corp. Open Sans was designed with an upright stress, open forms and a neutral, yet friendly appearance. It was optimized for print, web, and mobile interfaces, and has excellent legibility characteristics in its letterforms.
Open Sans has several font weights:
- Light - used for text summaries.
- Regular - used for body text
- Semi-bold
- Bold - used for subheadings
- Extra-bold - used for main headings
Decor font:
In contrast, the decor font we use - Caveat - should be used sparingly, and preferrably after discussion with the design team. It is also a free font available at Google fonts.
Caveat is a handwriting type family designed by Pablo Impallari. It is designed for both short annotations and body text usage.
Our logos are custom, but the co-brand logos use Rubik as a base for typing out the secondary brand names.
- Download co-brand logos here.
- More information about Rubik may be found on the Google fonts website.
Custom typograhy styles & decor
We use a red line below main, and certain subheadings.
- Do not overdo this. We have no firm rules, but the general rule is to only use this for main headings. Sub-headings only if they relate to sections or modules.
- The three dots, if used, should never be set in the red accent color. Ref update September 2021.
If you want to try something else - contact the design team.
All Caps headings
- Use for short headings only, and sparingly
- Be aware of conflicts and reading issues if the sentence contains abbreviations
- Never write texts online in all-caps: this will give a bad score for usability. Use CSS-styles, or ask for them.
Colors:
- Body text should be set in black, or dark gray
- Blue colors in texts only for links.
- Ensure good readability - check contrasts and bleed, especially for digital applications.
- If white text is used on other background colors than the blue options, font size and weight must be increased.
- Digital durfaces should respect WCAG for contrast and readability. See contrast checker
Extrabold fonts:
- Again, to be used sparingly for main headings, only if text is large.
If you have questions, please do not hestitate to contact the design department.