🔗 Google Sans: evolving Google’s typeface

Sometimes, design elements are birthed in flashes of inspiration — What if our interfaces were like paper? What if YouTube was a little more pink? — but not Google’s brand typeface.

Google Sans is the iconic typeface used across every Google product from Search to Wallet. It’s one of the most-served fonts on the internet, clocking in at some 120 billion font requests a month. It wasn’t born from a single brilliant sprint or creative spark. It evolved as the answer to a set of specific design problems, an answer that continued to expand and adapt to meet the shifting needs of users, designers, and developers. Now, after nearly a decade on Pixel phones and in Google apps, Google Sans is making its next big move: going open-source.

Read on for a brief history of Google’s beloved font, told through the design problems that shaped it.