Playfair Display Font
by Claus Eggers Sørensen · Serif · 12 styles · OFL · free for commercial use
Characters
About Playfair Display
Playfair is a transitional design.
In the European Enlightenment in the late 18th century, broad nib quills were replaced by pointed steel pens as the popular writing tool of the day.
Together with developments in printing technology, ink, and paper making, it became fashionable to print letterforms of high contrast and delicate hairlines that were increasingly detached from the written letterforms.
This design lends itself to this period, and while it is not a revival of any particular design, it takes influence from the designs of John Baskerville and from ‘Scotch Roman’ designs.
This typeface was initially published in 2011, and had a major update in 2017.
Being a Display (large size) design in the transitional genre, functionally and stylistically it can accompany Georgia or Gelasio for body text.
It was succeeded in 2023 by the complete Playfair design, which as a variable font includes body text designs in the optical size axis.
This is the main family, with a sibling Playfair Display SC small caps family.
The main family downloaded font files include a full set of small caps, common ligatures, and discretionary ligatures.
The Playfair project is led by Claus Eggers Sørensen, a type designer based in Amsterdam, Netherlands.
To contribute, see github.com/clauseggers/Playfair-Display
License & usage
Playfair Display is licensed under the SIL Open Font License 1.1. You can use it for free in personal and commercial projects: logos, websites, apps, videos, print and products. You may embed it and modify it; the font files themselves may not be sold on their own.
To use it on a website, add the files with @font-face and set font-family: 'Playfair Display', serif;
View the full license text (also included in the ZIP).
