On a recent project i was looking at web font options for a particular style consistent with primary school typeface usage – i.e. where the lowercase ‘a’ has no top arch (also called “single-story”). There are several usual suspects here, such as Sassoon Primary, FSAlbert, Futura, even (shudder) Comic Sans!
I thought I’d also check through Google Fonts, and there are quite a few options for web fonts. I’ve compiled a quick list here, ordered by ‘number of styles’ each typeface has available (this tends to be a good indicator of typeface completeness/quality – though several useful ‘display’ typefaces often only have 1 style):
| Typeface (+ link) |
Styles | Notes (all have single-story “a” glyphs) |
| Josephin Sans | 10 | |
| Poppins | 5 | |
| Amaranth* | 4 | Also has a loopy ‘k’ + simple ‘g’ |
| Caudex | 4 | Serif |
| Quicksand | 3 | Quirky, widesp a c e d |
| Comfortaa | 3 | Quirky |
| AbeeZee | 2 | |
| Montserratt Alternates | 2 | Unusual ‘z’ (central beam) |
| Sniglet | 2 | Quirky |
| Bree Serif | 1 | |
| Questrial | 1 | |
| Righteous | 1 | Quirky |
| Fredoka One | 1 | Quirky (very bold) |
| Paytone One | 1 | Quirky (very bold) |
| Viga | 1 | Quirky |
| Carter One | 1 | Quirky (very bold) |
| Inder | 1 | |
| Imprima* | 1 | Also has a loopy ‘k’ + simple ‘g’ |
| Andika | 1 | |
| Salsa* | 1 | Quirky, has a loopy ‘k’ + simple ‘g’ |
| Ruluko* | 1 | Also has a loopy ‘k’ + simple ‘g’ |
| Ranga | 1 | Quirky |
This isn’t 100% complete, there are a few more quirky “display font” options.
Fonts marked * also have a loopy ‘k’. Also consider the lowercase ‘g’ shape for children.
Also note that many fonts have non-arch ‘a’s in their italic sets.
UPDATE October 2018
It’s been a while since i checked or updated these. For now, there are a couple of new ones worth considering:
Nirimit https://fonts.google.com/specimen/Niramit (6 weights)
Didact Gothic: https://fonts.google.com/specimen/Didact+Gothic (1 weight)
UPDATE January 2021
A few new ones worth considering – Google has added quite a few new ‘variable’ fonts (variable fonts don’t have fixed ‘sets’ for different weights, they have algorithmic sets which can be adjusted to pretty much any ‘weight’:
Thanks for this list! I’m also working on a project that requires a single-story a. It’s really tricky to find a good one that has a useful amount of styles.
Thanks, exactly the list I was looking for!
Thanks for collecting these, I looked through the google list a dozen times and never caught that serif option ‘Caudex.’
I wish there was a more rounded serif option for the younglings.. but Caudex works for what I need.
Appreciate it!
I’m looking for one that has rounded terminals for i’s and t’s as well and is a serif font.
Any suggestions?
I’m unaware of how to get these fonts on my device
hi – from google fonts you can download the font files and install them directly onto your computer. on a mac i use the “Font Book’ app to manage font installations – things will be different on a Windows machine.
Noticed you didn’t have one of the Vernon adams popular ones: Muli.
Thanks Douglas – will check it out. Perhaps it’s been added since i did this post a while back?
Geometric sans serif typefaces are those that employ basic geometric shapes?—?rectangle, triangle, and circle. First of all, these are the likes of 1920—19 German grotesks?—?e.g. Futura, Kabel,?—?they usually have a circular О . The second subgroup are typefaces with simplified, geometrically stylised shapes which initially had to do with industrial production?—?e.g. DIN, Bank Gothic, Eurostile. Some of them are sometimes classified as
Thank you so much for this resource! Children’s librarian here, and I want to make resources for my early reader and reluctant reader kids but I often see them stop when they encounter these odd-shaped g’s and a’s and k’s. Sometimes, these letters cause great frustration. My brother has dysgraphia, and I can only imagine what dyslexia must be like with these weird shapes. I want at least what comes out of our department to be consistent and easy-to-read. Thanks for making that possible, and for keeping it updated! Will be bookmarking for future updates, and sharing with my team!