The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog
Free font
Ostrich Sans
A free alternative to Galgo Condensed.
About Ostrich Sans
Ostrich Sans is a tall, elegant condensed sans by Tyler Finck, released free through The League of Moveable Type in 2011. Its extreme vertical proportion, high waist, and fine detailing give it a refined, almost fashion-magazine bearing that most condensed grotesques never reach.
The family ranges from light to heavy plus inline and dashed variants, so it flexes from delicate to poster-black while keeping the same narrow footprint. It is a display face first — at headline and cover sizes the elongated forms look composed and deliberate, where at text sizes they close up too tightly. An Open Font License release, self-hosted here.
- Designer
- Tyler Finck
- Released
- 2011
- Available at
- The League of Moveable Type →
Ostrich Sans is also a free alternative to…
- Galgo Condensed → A free tall display sans with an unusually thin, stretched construction that comes closest to Galgo Condensed Light and the Morganite idea behind it. It comes in several weights including rounded and dashed variants, but its forms are quirkier and it has less complete language coverage.
- Peristyle → A tall, narrow display sans from The League of Moveable Type with the same 1930s Deco lean as Peristyle, in several weights plus inlines and rounded cuts. Its strokes stay close to monoline, so it lacks Peristyle's sharp thick-thin contrast, but the skyscraper silhouette is the nearest free match.
Display + body that work together
Pages that earn the read
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 Ostrich Sans + Source Serif 4
Letters that hold their nerve
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 Bodoni Moda + Ostrich Sans