The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog
Best free alternatives to
Lyon
Commercial Type released Lyon in 2009, designed by Kai Bernau, who began it as his degree project at the Type and Media course in The Hague and named it after the French city where Granjon worked. It is a contemporary interpretation of Robert Granjon's sixteenth-century serifs, keeping the Renaissance proportions and calligraphic italic while sharpening the details for modern printing and screens. It made its debut in the New York Times Magazine, and a dedicated Display cut followed in 2010, giving the family a text and a headline voice. These free typefaces work the same Garamond-Granjon register without the license fee.
The closest font to LyonThe quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog
The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog
The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog
The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog
Display + body that work together
A grammar of empty space
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 EB Garamond + Inter
Letters that hold their nerve
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.
Modern · Editorial Archivo + EB Garamond
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Common questions about Lyon alternatives
- Is Lyon free?
- No — Lyon is a commercial typeface from Commercial Type. Lyon is a commercial typeface licensed through Commercial Type for desktop, web and app use. The closest free alternative is EB Garamond, available on Google Fonts.
- What font is similar to Lyon?
- EB Garamond is the closest free match. Georg Duffner's revival of the 1592 Egenolff-Berner specimen, whose italics were cut by Robert Granjon himself, so it draws on the same sixteenth-century source as Lyon. It reads warmer and more historical, with rougher, more literal details where Lyon is crisp and systematized.
- Can I use EB Garamond in commercial projects?
- Yes — EB Garamond is published under a free license on Google Fonts and can be used in commercial work. Confirm the license text at the source before shipping.