The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog
The Seasons vs Raleway
A high-contrast commercial serif against one of Google Fonts' most-downloaded sans-serifs. The Seasons, by Elena Genova for My Creative Land, is a vintage-flavoured display serif with calligraphic italics, while Raleway is a slender, elegant sans that began as a single thin weight and grew into a full variable family.
The Seasons is a commercial font, so it is shown here in Cormorant, its closest free alternative. All free alternatives to The Seasons →
The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog
- The Seasons is a sharp, high-contrast serif with softly sheared terminals and companion italics hand-written with a Pilot Parallel Pen; Raleway has no serifs and its default letters draw on neo-grotesque forms, with a geometric alternate set available via stylistic sets.
- Raleway started in 2010 as Matt McInerney's single thin weight and was expanded to nine weights by Pablo Impallari and Rodrigo Fuenzalida in 2012, with italics added in 2016; The Seasons runs from Thin to ExtraBold with matching calligraphic italics.
- Raleway ships as a variable font with weight (100–900) and italic axes, plus old-style and lining numerals and a long list of OpenType features; The Seasons offers ligatures and stylistic alternates and covers Extended Latin and Cyrillic.
- The Seasons is commercial — around $40 per style on Fontspring or via an Adobe Fonts subscription, with self-hosted web and app licences sold separately — while Raleway is free under the SIL Open Font License.
The Seasons
Reach for The Seasons when a brand, magazine, package, or invitation calls for a refined, high-contrast serif with genuinely calligraphic italics and the licence cost is justified.
Raleway
Reach for Raleway when you want an elegant, airy sans for headings and display text at zero cost, with a variable weight range and free web licensing built in.