A curated list of digital specimens
of the highest quality. Updated daily.
Essonnes
Now this is cool. Instead of just showing a bunch of letters, type testers, and features like all specimens do, why not take three short stories and typeset them to show off the real-world capabilities of the web font. Perfect.
Couture and Couture Sans
This is really, really interesting from Positype. The unusual, but simple, interaction design of mirrored scrolling lend itself perfectly to this high contrast fashionista type design. Just enough content to whet the appetite presented in a cool way. Take my money.
Bixa Color
Some interesting things can be done with colour fonts. Bixa was originally designed as wood type for letterpress, and is now transformed into a multicolor font for web. The specimen suffers slightly in the same way specimens for variable fonts do: they have to explain the benefits and features ahead of the actual design. That said, this is an interesting specimen.
Baton Turbo
If you ignore the strange spinning wheel in the top corner, this is a well put together specimen. Striking colourways underpin some solid, usable components. The feature illustrations are particularly good.
Kaligari
This specimen page for Kaligari belongs to the 'scrollable svgs' type of specimen. That said, these look great. High contrast, interesting shapes, and enough detail to properly evaluate the typeface without a type tester.
Proxima Vara
Proxima Nova goes variable! This specimen, or more like a micro site, has some interesting examples as type testers: mocked up physical artefacts with the type overlaying them and controls to change the variable axes. Seen many times in more corporate guidelines, this is a cool addition to a specimen site.
Spezia Serif Font
A useful specimen from Luzi Type for Spezia Serif. Of particular note is the little variable font tester. This is great. A simple user interface offering axis sliders and italic toggles.
Utile Narrow
A solid, functional library specimen from Kontour. Stacked type testers with variable length sample text give way to accordions of features and design story.
Mikro Super
A specimen exclusively made up from stacked type testers for each weight and style. The vibrant colours work well against the large, heavy glyphs.
Climate crisis font | Helsingin Sanomat
An interesting specimen for an interesting idea. A font that degrades in weights that represent the degredation of the Artict sea ice from 1979 and that projected in 2050. Specimen wise, it has some nice touches.
Two Type System
I miss typefaces like this. Reminds me of FUSE. The specimen for Two System doesn't quite demonstrate the possibilities, though. I'd really appreciate a type tester and some example usage.
New Atten
Newlyn's templated specimens are really excellent from a usability perspective, offering all the features we know users need when evaluating a new font. But, of particular interest, is the multi-lingual content for the type tester.