The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog
Founders Grotesk vs Hanken Grotesk
Founders Grotesk is Kris Sowersby's 2010 Klim Type Foundry take on the rough-edged grotesques of the early 1900s, drawing on Miller & Richard's Grotesque series and Caslon's Doric. Hanken Grotesk is an open-source sans led by Alfredo Marco Pradil, also inspired by the classic grotesques but tidied up with updated geometry and metrics for screens. Both are neutral-leaning grotesques with real character, but one is a paid revival and the other a free workhorse.
Founders Grotesk is a commercial font, so it is shown here in Work Sans, its closest free alternative. All free alternatives to Founders Grotesk →
The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog
- Founders Grotesk keeps the serpentine curves and narrow apertures of its Victorian-era sources, and its tight spacing is modelled on late-1950s Helvetica Halbfett headline cuts.
- Hanken Grotesk is a cleaner, more rationalised grotesque, with geometry and metrics revised for interface design, websites, and mobile apps as well as print.
- Founders Grotesk ships as five weights from Light to Bold with matching italics, each manually kerned and hinted; Hanken Grotesk runs from Light to Black as a variable font with a single weight axis.
- Founders Grotesk is a commercial font from Klim sold on a pay-once licence per style or package, while Hanken Grotesk is free under the SIL Open Font License for any use.
Founders Grotesk
Reach for Founders Grotesk when a brand or editorial identity needs a grotesque with visible historical grit and you can budget for a Klim licence.
Hanken Grotesk
Reach for Hanken Grotesk for product UI, websites, and body text where you want a neutral grotesque with a wide weight range at no licensing cost.