The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog
Free font
Tinos
A free alternative to Imperial.
About Tinos
Tinos is Steve Matteson's metric-compatible answer to Times New Roman, released in 2010 with the same character widths and line heights as the original. Swap one for the other and the page count does not move. It was drawn for fidelity first.
The drawing is a conventional newsprint serif — moderate contrast, compact proportions, even color at text sizes — and that metric fidelity is the whole argument for it, the drop-in replacement for when document fidelity matters most. It also supplies the generic ink-on-newsprint feel that stands in for Imperial and other mid-century newspaper text faces. And because Times was modeled on Plantin, Tinos amounts to Plantin's free grandchild, useful at the utilitarian end of that spectrum rather than the warm bookish one. Where a layout was designed around Times, this is the safest free swap available.
- Designer
- Steve Matteson
- Released
- 2010
- Available at
- Google Fonts →
- Featured on
- 3 paid font pages
Tinos is also a free alternative to…
- Imperial → Metrically compatible with Times New Roman, the other great newsprint serif; if you want the generic, ink-on-newsprint feel of mid-century newspaper text, Tinos delivers it for free.
- Plantin → Metrically compatible with Times New Roman, the typeface modeled directly on Plantin — so Tinos is, genealogically, Plantin's free grandchild. Choose it for the newsprint-adjacent, utilitarian end of the Plantin spectrum.
- Times New Roman → Drawn by Steve Matteson to be metric-compatible with Times New Roman — same character widths, same line heights, same page counts when you swap them. The drop-in replacement when document fidelity matters most.
Display + body that work together
A grammar of empty space
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.
Quiet type that does the work
Crisp, even strokes give the display its punch. Quiet serifs underneath stay readable across thousands of words — used together by editors at the kind of paper that still prints corrections.