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Source Serif Readme

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Frank Grießhammer edited this page Jan 25, 2021 · 3 revisions

This document contains product information, updates, and troubleshooting tips.

History

Source Serif is an open-source typeface for setting text in many sizes, weights, and languages – conceived as a companion to Source Sans. The close companionship of Source Sans and Source Serif is achieved by a careful match of letter proportions and typographic color. While designed to harmonize with its serif-less counterpart, Source Serif often takes its own direction, in part because the two are inspired by different historical precedents. Source Serif is loosely based on the work of Pierre Simon Fournier, and many idiosyncrasies typical to Fournier’s designs (like a bottom serif on the b or a serif on the middle pinnacle of w) are also found in Source Serif. Without being a historical revival, Source Serif takes cues from Fournier’s designs and reworks them for contemporary use.

Source Sans and Source Serif have different personalities because they spring from the hands of different designers. Source Serif was designed by Frank Grießhammer, Source Sans was designed by Paul Hunt. Robert Slimbach consulted on both designs, which helped maintain the overall family harmony. Either design feels confident on its own but also works in combination with the other – just like their designers do.

Major extensions to Source Serif have been completed with the help of Irene Vlachou and Emilios Theofanous, who added Greek Italic styles in 2018. Reymund Schroeder and Thomas Thiemich worked on adding Optical Sizes in 2020.

Source Serif continues Adobe’s line of high-quality open source typefaces. Designed for a digital environment, the letter shapes are simplified and highly readable. The historical roots, combined with the guidance through an experienced designer give the typeface a strong character of its own that will shine when used for extended text on paper or on screen.

If you are interested in contributing to this open source project, please visit this project page for information on how to become involved. Source Serif can be adapted and redistributed according to the terms of the Open Font License (OFL) agreement.

Menu Names And Style Linking

In many Windows® applications, instead of every font appearing on the menu, fonts are grouped into style-linked sets, and only the name of the base style font for a set is shown in the menu. The italic and the bold weight fonts of the set (if any) are not shown in the font menu, but can still be accessed by selecting the base style font, and then using the italic and bold style buttons. In this family, such programs will show only the following base style font names in the menu:

  • Source Serif
  • Source Serif Black
  • Source Serif ExtraLight
  • Source Serif Light
  • Source Serif Semibold

Menu Name + Style Option = select this font

  • Source Serif + Italic = Source Serif Italic
  • Source Serif + Bold = Source Serif Bold
  • Source Serif + Bold Italic = Source Serif Bold Italic
  • Source Serif Black + Italic = Source Serif Black Italic
  • Source Serif ExtraLight + Italic = Source Serif ExtraLight Italic
  • Source Serif Light + Italic = Source Serif Light Italic
  • Source Serif Semibold + Italic + Source Serif Semibold Italic

On macOS, although each font appears as a separate entry on the font menu, users may also select fonts by means of style links. Selecting a base style font and then using the style links (as described above for Windows applications) enhances cross-platform document compatibility with many applications, such as Microsoft Word, although it is unnecessary with more sophisticated Adobe applications such as recent versions of Illustrator, Photoshop or InDesign software.

One should not, however, select a base font which has no style-linked variant, and then use the bold or italic styling button. Doing so will either have no effect, or result in programmatic bolding or slanting of the base font, which will usually produce inferior screen and print results.

Known Issues

  • Some glyphs in the font cannot be accessed unless you are using an OpenType compatible application.

  • CFF2 variable fonts require a recent operating system, such as macOS >= Version 10.15, or Windows 10 >= Version 1909.

Customer Support

If you require technical assistance, please email us at type-questions@adobe.com. Font specific resources can also be found on the Adobe Type user-to-user forums.

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