Nearly 30 years after Adobe Systems Inc. unleashed its PostScript fonts on the design world in 1984, the company in August released Source Sans Pro, its first open-source type family.
Though Adobe was reluctant to reveal proprietary font information in the early days, this new open-source font, which provides developers with the software source code and guidelines to make improvements to it, is in keeping with more recent collaborative projects like the Adobe Font Development Kit for OpenType.
The Source Sans font package, currently comprised of six weights from Black to ExtraLight, as well as the source files themselves, can be downloaded for free from SourceForge. Versions that can be used for the Web can be found via font hosting services such as Typekit.
And font nerds will want to check out Paul Hunt’s behind-the-curtain account of just what went into the creation of this font.
