The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog
Free font
Urbanist
A free alternative to Century Gothic.
About Urbanist
Urbanist is Corey Hu's low-contrast geometric sans from 2020, built from elementary shapes and shipped as a variable font running Thin to Black. Open counters, airy roundness, and a neutral Modernist voice define it, and nine weights plus italics give it enough range to carry a full type system rather than a single headline.
Its spacing, proportions, and terminal treatment sit remarkably close to Gilroy, and the matching breadth makes that swap practical rather than approximate. Urbanist captures Century Gothic's airy roundness in a more neutral, modern register with far greater weight coverage, and reads like Nexa refreshed for the 2020s with a crisp product-design polish. Slightly wider and airier than Google Sans, its lighter weights handle the clean Material-marketing look, while its Modernist restraint gets close to Verlag's institutional tone.
- Designer
- Corey Hu
- Released
- 2020
- Available at
- Google Fonts →
- Featured on
- 5 paid font pages
Urbanist is also a free alternative to…
- Century Gothic → Built from elementary geometric shapes with low contrast and open counters, Urbanist captures Century Gothic's airy roundness in a more neutral, modern voice. A full variable axis from Thin to Black gives it far more range than the original.
- Gilroy → A low-contrast Modernist geometric sans whose spacing, proportions, and terminal treatment sit remarkably close to Gilroy. Available as a variable font across nine weights plus italics, it matches Gilroy's wide range for building a full type system.
- Google Sans → A low-contrast geometric built from elementary shapes, slightly wider and airier than Google Sans. Its lighter weights capture the clean Material-marketing look well.
- Nexa → A low-contrast geometric variable font with the same open, elementary shapes and a crisp product-design polish. Feels like Nexa refreshed for the 2020s, with a full weight axis and italics for free.
- Verlag → A low-contrast geometric sans inspired by Modernist design principles, in nine weights plus italics; cleaner and more neutral than Montserrat, closer to Verlag's institutional voice.
Display + body that work together
Headlines, written under pressure
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.
Modern · Editorial Urbanist + Source Serif 4
Quiet type that does the work
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 Playfair Display + Urbanist