The Problem
MgOpen Modata doesn't support accent marks very well. For example, I (Máirín) can't write my own name in MgOpen Modata. This became a big problem when Luya, one of our designers, put together 'Muffin', the French Fedora Community magazine. Luya ended up using the font Comfortaa for Muffin so the French language was understandable!
Another problem, somewhat orthogonal to the i18n problem, is that the logotype for the Fedora project is Bryant2, a closed and quite expensive font.
Requirements
- The font must support accent marks for the Latin-based character sets we support.
- The font must be open source. If a suitable 'free' font is found, we must come to an agreement on changing the license to one acceptable for inclusion on Fedora with the font author before it may be used.
- The font shouldn't be too much of a departure from our brand. Ideally the headline font could replace the Bryant2 in our logo without much non-designer notice!
The Proposal
We should put together a proposal for the following fonts:
- Official Headline Font - to be used both on-screen and in print.
- Official Screen body text font - to be used in on-screen media (websites, electronic docs, etc.)
- Official Print body text font - to be used in print media, such as newsletters.
- CJKV headline font - to coordinate
- Indic headline font - to coordinate
In the design team meeting on 29 June 2010, our initial cut at a proposal (without much research into alternative fonts) was:
- Official Headline font - Comfortaa or Quicksand or Arista 2.0
- Official screen body text - Droid Sans
- Official Print body text - Droid Serif
In our 06 July 2010 meeting, we decided:
- Screen & Print body text font can be the same
In our 13 July 2010 meeting, we decided:
- Let's try Cantarell for body text
Blog Posts
- http://ianweller.org/2010/07/12/another-double-post-fedoras-fonts-and-more-datanommer/
- http://ryanler.wordpress.com/2010/07/12/fedora-branding-fonts-trial/
- http://ryanler.wordpress.com/2010/07/14/update-on-the-fedora-branding-fonts/
- http://nicubunu.blogspot.com/2010/07/cantarell.html
Suggested Fonts
Suggestions from Design Team Meeting
- In the 06 July 2010 design team meeting, we decided to trial Comfortaa as the headline font and Droid Sans as the body font.
Comfortaa
Quicksand
Droid Sans
Droid Serif
Arista 2.0
