Reading should cost less effort.
A geometric sans serif in five weights, drawn so accessibility is built into the family itself. Designed for comfortable, low-ambiguity reading, with features that may particularly benefit readers with dyslexia or low vision.
The headline is editable. Type your own words into it.
Designed for reading
Some fonts add avoidable visual ambiguity to reading. Listerdale Sans distinguishes commonly confused characters, keeps punctuation visible and gives words slightly more space, without looking like a specialist typeface.
One, lowercase l and capital I each take a different shape - the I carries top and bottom crossbars - so codes and references read without guesswork.
The q carries a tail on its descender, so p and q are no longer mirror twins.
An open, uncrossed w. One less unfamiliar shape to decode.
The d runs narrower than the b, quietly adding another cue beyond direction alone. Full stops and commas are enlarged so punctuation remains visible, and the lowercase runs slightly taller for easier recognition at small sizes.
Lining figures align steadily in tables, and the zero carries a centre dot so it never reads as O.
room to breathe and read
Built-in spacing is set against unmodified Raleway as the baseline: letter sidebearings are increased by 12 units each (2.4% of an em in total), and the word space (255 to 325 units) is 27% wider than Raleway's default. Both figures are measurable from the two font files. Add more with CSS or your app's settings; the font won't fight you.
A drawn italic in every weight, inherited from the parent design and carried through every accessibility feature. For titles, terms and quotations; bold remains the emphasis of choice for accessible text.
Extra clearance after the r and c (135 units of air at every weight) keeps rn reading as two letters instead of m, and cl from closing into d at small sizes.
Stroke weight settles gently toward the baseline, anchoring each letter. An intentional design feature of the text cut, not an established reading intervention.
Try it
Set your own text in any weight.
Four weights
Text and Display
Same letterforms, same widths, two finishes. The text cut grades stroke weight gently toward the baseline for comfortable reading; Display keeps strokes crisp and even for large sizes. Swapping between them never reflows a line.
Text cut - body copy and everything you read. Look at the stroke bottoms: slightly heavier, anchoring each letter.
Display - headings, titles and anything above about 20pt. Even strokes, clean at any scale. This page's own headings are set in it.
Why we made it
Our work runs on documents: proposals, reports, slide decks. If one reader in ten finds them harder to read than they should be, that is a communication problem, and we sit inside it. We wanted a typeface that removed the friction without looking like an aid. The ones that existed either announced themselves loudly or came with licence fees, so we drew our own and decided it should be free. If it makes one report easier for someone to read, releasing it was worth the effort.
Free. Properly free.
Twenty fonts: five weights, roman and italic, in two optical cuts (a text cut for reading, a Display cut for headings), a specimen and the licence in one download. Use it, embed it and share it, commercially or otherwise. If you pass the fonts on, keep the licence file and copyright notice with them: they carry the attribution, and redistribution without them is not permitted. The font files may not be sold. A credit or link back when you use it publicly is appreciated, never required. Matching PowerPoint, Word and LibreOffice templates are available separately; install the fonts first.
Download Listerdale Sans Templates