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?