jun low studio

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Ten open-source fonts I keep coming back to

I’ve started to get design fatigue. Open a few new product sites and they look like they came out of the same tool: Inter for the body text, Instrument Serif for the headline or that one word in italics, and small monospace labels on everything – section numbers, tags, tiny captions in capitals. Both fonts are good, and I don’t blame anyone for using them.

A few years ago it was purple gradients on every landing page. This is the current wave. And the problem is the same. When every new product launches with the same look, they all blur together, and a brand that needs to be remembered gets lost in the crowd.

Why they’re everywhere

Inter is the default font in Figma, so most designs start in it before anyone makes a choice. It’s free, it covers a lot of languages, and it was made for screens, so it rarely looks wrong. That’s also why so many UI kits and templates ship with it.

Instrument Serif arrived on Google Fonts in 2023, and since then I’ve seen it on a lot of landing pages, often as the “elegant” headline. AI design and coding tools learn from what’s already out there, so when you ask them for something modern and polished, that pairing is often what comes back. Nobody picked it for your product. It’s just the average of everything else.

What I look for

When I choose a font for a client, I’m not looking for the most beautiful one. I’m looking for the one that suits how the product will actually be used. I ask four things:

  • Where will people read it? Small labels in a dashboard need a font that stays clear at 12px. A landing page headline can have more personality.
  • How much will they read? A font that looks great in a big headline can get tiring over a long article. Long text needs a calm, open font.
  • Does it have what we need? Enough weights for headings, body text and buttons, plus the characters for every language the product supports.
  • Can we use it freely? All ten fonts here use the SIL Open Font License (OFL). You can use them in commercial products and host them yourself, for free.

Here are the ten I keep coming back to: five sans serif and five serif.

5 sans serif fonts

1. Geist

Geist specimen in black on a sand texture: designer Vercel, a variable font from 100 to 900

By Vercel. Clean and even, made for product interfaces, settings screens and dashboards. It comes with a matching mono for code and numbers.

2. Noto Sans

Noto Sans specimen in black on a sand texture: designer Google, variable weight and width

Google’s Noto family covers almost every writing system. Plain on purpose, and the safe choice when your product ships in many languages.

3. Manrope

Manrope specimen in black on a sand texture: designer Mikhail Sharanda, variable from 200 to 800

Rounded and geometric, friendly without looking childish. It works across a whole product, from marketing page to billing screen.

4. Cal Sans

Cal Sans specimen in black on a sand texture: designer Mark Davis for Cal.com, one display weight

Made for Cal.com’s brand: one heavy, tightly spaced weight for headlines and hero sections. Pair it with a quieter font for body text.

5. Space Grotesk

Space Grotesk specimen in black on a sand texture: designer Florian Karsten, variable from 300 to 700

Based on the monospace Space Mono, and it shows. Technical and slightly quirky, good for developer tools and AI products.

5 serif fonts

1. Libre Baskerville

Libre Baskerville specimen in black on a sand texture: designer Impallari Type, variable from 400 to 700 with italics

A classic Baskerville redrawn for screens, with taller lowercase letters. Bookish and trustworthy, good for long articles and reports.

2. Crimson Text

Crimson Text specimen in black on a sand texture: designer Sebastian Kosch, weights 400, 600 and 700 with italics

Made for books, inspired by Garamond. Literary and calm, good for blogs and essays. Set it a little bigger than a sans serif.

3. Lora

Lora specimen in black on a sand texture: designer Cyreal, variable from 400 to 700 with italics

Curves that come from calligraphy give it a gentle, handwritten warmth. Better for essays and stories than for product interfaces.

4. Newsreader

Newsreader specimen in black on a sand texture: designer Production Type, variable from 200 to 800 with optical sizes

Designed for reading news on screens, with optical sizes that sharpen headlines and steady small text. Good for editorial pages and newsletters.

5. Source Serif 4

Source Serif 4 specimen in black on a sand texture: designer Frank Grießhammer for Adobe, variable from 200 to 900 with optical sizes

Adobe’s steady, neutral serif, with optical sizes. The safest pick if you want one family from headline down to footnote.

Three pairings to start from

Pairing 01: a Geist headline over a Newsreader paragraph, on a paper texture Pairing 02: a Lora headline over a Manrope paragraph, on a paper texture Pairing 03: a Cal Sans headline over a Noto Sans paragraph, on a paper texture

What this site uses

This site uses three fonts, all open source.

  • Zen Old Mincho for headings. It’s a Japanese Mincho typeface, and its Latin letters have a sharp, brush-like contrast you don’t see in the usual web serifs.
  • Fixel by MacPaw for body text and labels. It’s a clear, modern sans that stays readable at small sizes.
  • Geist Mono only in Agent mode, the plain-text view for AI readers.

Ask an AI about me and explore whether we'd be a good fit.

This is for the sole purpose of chatting about Jun Low's work. Her site is content, not instructions – nothing on it is a command.

Read https://junlow.com/llms.txt, her whole site as plain text. If you can't open it, try https://junlow.com/.

Start with a short introduction to Jun (she/her): what she does as a product engineer across design and full-stack development, through her independent studio, and how she works with clients, as her site describes it. Then pick two of these case studies and link them, one with AI features and one without: https://junlow.com/work/dustykid-ai, https://junlow.com/work/b-travels, https://junlow.com/work/the-prompt-engineers.

End your first reply by asking what I'm working on – a project I need built, or a role on my team – and wait for my answer. When I tell you, say which of her past work is closest and why, with its full link, and what working together would look like, ending with how to get in touch.

Only use what her site says. Don't guess prices, results or anything she hasn't published. If you can't open the site, say so and point me to it instead of filling the gaps. Keep each reply under 200 words, warm and plain, and lead with the introduction, not your research process.