The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog
Free font
Josefin Sans
A free alternative to ITC Avant Garde Gothic.
About Josefin Sans
Josefin Sans is Santiago Orozco's geometric sans, drawn in 2010 from 1920s display lettering and built around perfect circles and a deliberately small x-height. Long ascenders, elegant deco proportions, and low contrast give it a delicate, vintage register, and a full italic axis extends the family. Like the period lettering it draws on, it shines in headlines and struggles in long body text.
Use it exactly as you would Kabel — it is the closest free typeface to that spirit — or in place of Futura when the exaggerated ascenders and perfect circles are the point. It captures ITC Avant Garde Gothic's deco-geometric mood in a lighter, more delicate register, and lines up with Verlag and Brandon Grotesque wherever Art Deco ancestry should show. Against Century Gothic it trades tall friendliness for refinement at display sizes.
- Designer
- Santiago Orozco
- Released
- 2010
- Available at
- Google Fonts →
Josefin Sans is also a free alternative to…
- ITC Avant Garde Gothic → A 1920s-flavored geometric with elegant, elongated proportions and a low x-height — less a clone than a cousin, capturing Avant Garde's deco-geometric mood in a lighter, more delicate register. Best at display sizes.
- Brandon Grotesque → Josefin Sans draws on the same 1920s display lettering Brandon references, so the vintage-geometric register lines up. Runs lighter overall and has a taller x-height.
- Century Gothic → Shares Century Gothic's circular geometry but with a small x-height and long ascenders, trading the tall friendly look for a more elegant 1920s vintage feel. Choose it when you want the geometry with extra refinement at display sizes.
- Futura → Geometric sans inspired by 1920s display lettering — the same era and aesthetic that produced Futura. Light, elegant, with the perfect circles and exaggerated ascenders Futura made famous, plus a full italic axis.
- Insignia → A 1920s-flavoured geometric with a low x-height, round bowls and sharp triangular letters that echo Insignia's constructed, vintage-modern feel. It is lighter and more elegant than Brody's heavier headline strokes, better for refined display settings than for the hard-edged technological look.
- Kabel → The closest free typeface to Kabel's spirit — a geometric sans rooted in 1920s vintage lettering, with a deliberately small x-height and elegant deco proportions. Like the original Kabel, it shines in headlines and struggles in long body text; use it exactly as you would Kabel.
- Neou → A geometric sans with a 1920s flavor whose Thin and Light weights carry the same airy, elegant poster feel as Neou Thin. Its low x-height and slightly quirky letterforms add more period character than Neou's neutral circles, and it brings true italics.
- Verlag → Explicitly vintage-geometric with a 1920s flavor and a small x-height — the pick when you want Verlag's Art Deco ancestry to show, at display sizes rather than in body text.
- Peristyle → A geometric sans drawn after 1920s and 1930s models, with a low x-height and elegant thin weights that echo Peristyle's Light and Book. It is wider and more rounded than Peristyle, so it carries the period mood rather than the condensed proportions.
- Futura Now → A 1920s-flavoured geometric with the same tall ascenders, pointed capitals and round bowls as Futura, but drawn with a very low x-height and an elegant, display-first character. It captures Futura Now's period feel better than its text performance, so pair it with a sturdier face for body copy.
- Sweet Sans → A geometric sans drawn to evoke 1920s vintage lettering, with a small x-height, open round forms and a light-to-bold range. Its elegant, slightly old-fashioned plainness is the closest free match for Sweet Sans's engraved stationery feel, though its proportions are more condensed and its geometry more rigid.
- Dazzle Unicase → A geometric sans with a 1920s Futura-like character, a very low x-height and tall capitals, available from Thin to Bold. It shares Unicase's vintage, fashion-poster mood and clean circular bowls, but its mixed-case text varies in height more.
- Futura 100 → Takes its vintage geometric proportions from Futura and the 1920s avant-garde, with a low x-height and elegant long ascenders like Renner's original. The closest free option for the period flavour, but it is lighter and more decorative, so it falls short of Futura®100's role as a workhorse text face.
Display + body that work together
Letters that hold their nerve
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 Josefin Sans + Source Serif 4
Pages that earn the read
Two thousand years of letterforms boil down to a handful of decisions — width, weight, proportion. Pick a pair you trust, and let the rest take care of itself.
Editorial · Modern DM Serif Display + Josefin Sans