The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog
Free font
Crimson Pro
A free alternative to Advercase.
About Crimson Pro
Crimson Pro is Sebastian Kosch's old-style book serif, released in 2018 and tuned for screen reading rather than historical literalism. It sits in the Garalde tradition — humanist warmth, a moderate x-height, measured contrast, and a comfortable text color across a full variable weight range. Kosch cites Tschichold, Slimbach, and Hoefler as influences, and the result keeps a genuinely bookish, sixteenth-century flavor while rendering cleanly at digital sizes.
As a free alternative it does the work of several licensed book faces at once. It stands in for Garamond and Caslon where their humanist warmth matters more than a faithful revival, and it is arguably the strongest free option for long-form body copy that would otherwise default to Minion or Sabon. Plantin and Tiempos settings work too — Crimson runs slightly more bookish than Tiempos, but its reading-first construction holds up in the same editorial text roles.
- Designer
- Sebastian Kosch
- Released
- 2018
- Available at
- Google Fonts →
Crimson Pro is also a free alternative to…
- Advercase → A contemporary old-style serif in the Garamond and Jenson tradition with warm, even strokes and a full weight range. Matches Advercase's classic roman structure and works well for headings and body alike, though its forms are rounder and less overtly retro than the Apple-era source.
- Caslon Pro → Jacques Le Bailly's modernised old-style with a broad weight range from extra light to black and matching italics. It reproduces Caslon's comfortable text colour and classic proportions while being smoother and more regular, trading some period irregularity for a larger, more flexible family.
- Caslon → Modern old-style serif drawn for screen reading. Captures Caslon's humanist warmth and moderate x-height with letterforms tuned for digital legibility — the right pick when historical literalism matters less than screen rendering.
- Garamond → Modern old-style serif designed for screen reading. Captures Garamond's humanist warmth and moderate x-height, with letterforms tuned for digital legibility — a good choice when historical literalism matters less than screen rendering.
- Lyon → A Garamond-flavored text serif reworked by Jacques Le Bailly as a variable family with a full weight range, mirroring Lyon Text's spread from Regular to Black. Its proportions and moderate contrast sit close to Lyon in running text, though the drawing is softer and less sharply cut.
- Minion Pro → Built explicitly in the old-style book tradition of Minion and Sabon, with a full variable weight range and comfortable text color. Arguably the best free choice for long-form body copy where Minion would otherwise be the default.
- Plantin → An old-style book face in the Garalde tradition Plantin descends from; graceful at text sizes with a genuinely bookish, sixteenth-century flavor.
- Sabon → Crimson explicitly cites Tschichold, Slimbach, and Hoefler as its design influences — a direct lineage to Sabon's design philosophy, with letterforms tuned for screen reading.
- Tiempos → An old-style book serif with elegant contrast and refined details for editorial typesetting. Slightly more bookish than Tiempos, but its measured contrast and reading-first construction make it a credible free stand-in for text settings.
- Coelacanth Display → A variable old-style serif in the Garamond and Jenson-influenced book tradition, with weights from ExtraLight to Black that mirror Coelacanth's Thin-to-Heavy range. The design is smoother and more regular than Coelacanth's calligraphic Venetian forms, giving a cleaner, more contemporary book look.
- Garamond Premier Pro → An old-style text serif in the Garamond tradition with a comfortable x-height and a full variable weight range. It matches Premier Pro's book-setting role and multilingual reach, but its forms are more modern and even, with less of the hand-cut irregularity of the Adobe revival.
- Minion 3 → An old-style book serif drawn in the same Renaissance tradition as Minion, with moderate contrast, a compact set width and a full italic. The closest match in overall texture and tone, though its serifs are a touch softer and the x-height a little lower than Minion 3's.
- Palatino → Jacques Le Bailly's reworking of Sebastian Kosch's Crimson Text, an old-style book serif built for long reading. It shares Palatino's Renaissance proportions, open counters and calligraphic stress, though its x-height is a touch smaller and its serifs lighter, so it reads more like a classic book face than Zapf's sturdy jobbing type.
- Apple Garamond → An old-style text serif with a sturdier colour and a larger x-height than the classical Garamonds, which pulls it closer to ITC Garamond's compact, screen-friendly proportions. Not condensed, but set tight it gives the same dense, warm paragraph texture Apple used in manuals.
- Feijoa → A Garalde book face with soft, rounded serifs and a generous x-height, which puts it in the same oldstyle register Klim claims for Feijoa. Crimson Pro is a touch lighter and more conventional in construction, and as a variable font it covers far more weights than Feijoa's Medium and Bold.
Display + body that work together
The shape of a working week
Body type does the heavy lifting. Get it right and the reader never thinks about it; get it wrong and they feel it before they can name what is off.
Editorial · Modern Crimson Pro + Manrope
Quiet type that does the work
The display sets the register; the body follows through. When both halves of a pair pull in the same direction, the design disappears and the words come forward.
Modern · Editorial Switzer + Crimson Pro