Quadraat Sans.
Glyphs
Quadraat Sans Design Information
TYPE BY Quadraat is Fred Smeijers first commercially released typeface (FF 1992). Originally designed for the eponymous Dutch design company Smeijers was a co-founding member of (currently name “het Lab”), Quadraat combines Renaissance elegance with contemporary ideas on construction and form. Quadraat sans was designed second, and commercially released in 1996.
Over the past two and a half decades after Quadraat's initial release, several other versions have been designed: Quadraat Sans, Mono, Display, and Headliner. All Quadraat fonts carry vibrant, powerful outlines, but they aren’t of the loud-mouthed, fun-font variety. Equally Quadraat didn’t fall prey to stiffly dated feel or outlines. Quadraat strives for a sort of understated noticeability we don’t see much anymore.
The TYPE BY Quadraat Sans follows a trend which was originated by Jan van Krimpen who designed Romulus, a classical typeface and to which he added some sans serif variations. It was not until the late eighties that this idea became more popular. The well known designs from our days are ITC Stone or ff Scala for example. Both typefaces give designers the opportunity to make use of well adapted sans serif variations. Quadraat which started with a serif version follows this young tradition. Sans serif typefaces can look very much alike, especially in the bolder variations. This is certainly not the case with Quadraat Sans. Quadraat Sans is like its serif companion a typeface with a rather strong character of its own. Thus, it was not that easy for the designer Fred Smeijers to make a gesture as strong as its serif companion without neglecting traditional proportions. But he obviously succeeded in giving the sans version a lively and humane character. This can be most clearly seen in big word images and is still there in text sizes, although in a more discreet way. So Quadraat Sans has display qualities, is an efficient typeface and suitable for longer texts at the same time.
The TYPE BY Quadraat fonts were fully remastered in 2019 and had been re-hinted to meet the demands of the current digital technology.
Quadraat sans fonts consist of seven weights of roman and italic designs, available in two widths. Its character set includes small caps, stylistic alternates, and multiple figure sets. Additional features include small cap, lining and old style figures (each in tabular and proportional widths); fractions; comprehensive superiors, inferiors, numerators and denominators; case sensitive punctuation sets; mathematical and monetary symbols; arrows; standard and discretionary ligatures (with their stylistic alternates); and a complete range of accents for all Western, Central and East European languages based on the Latin script.
Quadraat Sans fonts are available in OTF CFF, TTF, WOFF, and WOFF2 formats. Legacy font formats are available on request.
Supported Languages
- Afrikaans
- Albanian
- Asu
- Basque
- Bemba
- Bena
- Breton
- Catalan
- Chiga
- Colognian
- Cornish
- Croatian
- Czech
- Danish
- Dutch
- Embu
- English
- Esperanto
- Estonian
- Faroese
- Filipino
- Finnish
- French
- Friulian
- Galician
- Ganda
- German
- Gusii
- Hungarian
- Icelandic
- Inari
- Sami
- Indonesian
- Irish
- Italian
- Jola-Fonyi
- Kabuverdianu
- Kalenjin
- Kamba
- Kikuyu
- Kinyarwanda
- Latvian
- Lithuanian
- Lower
- Sorbian
- Luo
- Luxembourgish
- Luyia
- Machame
- Makhuwa-Meetto
- Makonde
- Malagasy
- Maltese
- Manx
- Meru
- Morisyen
- North
- Ndebele
- Northern
- Sami
- Norwegian
- Bokmal
- Norwegian
- Nynorsk
- Nyankole
- Oromo
- Polish
- Portuguese
- Quechua
- Romanian
- Romansh
- Rombo
- Rundi
- Rwa
- Samburu
- Sango
- Sangu
- Scottish
- Gaelic
- Sena
- Serbian
- Shambala
- Shona
- Slovak
- Slovenian
- Soga
- Somali
- Spanish
- Swahili
- Swedish
- Swiss
- German
- Taita
- Teso
- Turkish
- Upper
- Sorbian
- Uzbek
- Volapuk
- Vunjo
- Walser
- Welsh
- Western
- Frisian
- Zulu