What is the Clear Sans® font?
Clear Sans™ is a… wait for it… rational geometric sans serif. It is intended to fill a niche… to provide an alternative to the somewhat based-on-vernacular signage, somewhat geometric sans. I hear the word vernacular thrown around too much and too loosely. If a typeface is based in the vernacular, based on hand-painted or hand-crafted signage, then it should be based on the movements of the hand, retain that warmth and not on a pretty geometric model. For me, clean, geometric and precise doesn’t have to be cold and expressionless. More…
The original skeleton was hand-painted in 2008 to help determine and inform my decisions going forward. The typeface was completed shortly afterwards at the behest of an old friend for their identity. As usual, I expanded it, but considered retiring it since there were so many things similar out there. Years later, I had a chance to rediscover it and came to the conclusion that it could be improved, expanded in a logical and useful way, and introduced.
I would be lying if I didn’t admit that the rise of webfonts and embedded type in applications influenced many of the decisions I made about reworking Clear Sans™. Completely new Text and Screen fonts were developed that utitlize larger x-heights, space-saving widths, logical (and simplified) weight offerings… to name a few alterations. Even the pricing of each variant was considered to produce a more reasonable and simple solution for the developer, designer, professional and novice.
Clear Sans™ is a departure from my previous sans serifs, but the influences of Aaux Next, Akagi Pro and Halogen are evident.
Enjoy a light-hearted mini-site devoted to Clear Sans™
Clear Sans® Font families
The Clear Sans® includes the following font families:
- Clear Sans ExtraThin
- Clear Sans ExtraThin Italic
- Clear Sans Thin
- Clear Sans Thin Italic
- Clear Sans ExtraLight
- Clear Sans ExtraLight Italic
- Clear Sans Light
- Clear Sans Light Italic
- Clear Sans Medium
- Clear Sans Medium Italic
- Clear Sans Book
- Clear Sans Book Italic
- Clear Sans SemiBold
- Clear Sans SemiBold Italic
- Clear Sans Bold
- Clear Sans Bold Italic
- Clear Sans Black
- Clear Sans Black Italic
- Clear Sans Ultra
- Clear Sans Ultra Italic
Clear Sans® Preview
Here is a preview of how Clear Sans® will look. For more previews using your own text as an example, click here.
