The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog
Free font
Frank Ruhl Libre
An open-source revival of Frank Rühl, the 1908 Hebrew text face, with a matching Latin serif, free on Google Fonts.
About Frank Ruhl Libre
Frank Ruhl Libre is Yanek Iontef's open-source revival of Frank Rühl, the Hebrew typeface Rafael Frank designed with the C. F. Rühl foundry in Leipzig between 1908 and 1910. The original was drawn to modernize Hebrew printing for secular texts while keeping traditional letterforms, and it became the most widely used Hebrew face in print. Fontef published the revival in 2016 under the SIL Open Font License; it was built as a Latin and Hebrew family, and Google Fonts now serves it as a variable font with a weight axis running from 300 to 900.
The Hebrew is the reason to choose it: long-form body text in Hebrew, bilingual Hebrew and Latin publications, and sites that want the familiar newspaper feel of Frank Rühl without a commercial license. The Latin is a sturdy, moderate-contrast serif that holds up at text sizes and pairs with the Hebrew without fighting it. It stands in for the licensed digital cuts such as Bitstream's Frank Ruehl BT and the FrankRuehl supplied by Kivun, and for paid Hebrew text serifs in general.
- Designer
- Yanek Iontef
- Released
- 2016
- Available at
- Google Fonts →
Display + body that work together
A grammar of empty space
A pairing is a relationship: one voice speaks first, the other answers, and the contrast between them sets the tone for the whole page.
Editorial · Modern Frank Ruhl Libre + 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 Geist + Frank Ruhl Libre