Fira Sans is a humanist sans-serif typeface designed by Erik Spiekermann, Ralph du Carrois, Anja Meiners, Botio Nikoltchev of Carrois Type Design and Patryk Adamczyk of Mozilla Corporation.[1][2][3][4] Originally commissioned by Telefónica and Mozilla Corporation as part of the joint effort during the development of Firefox OS. It is a slightly wider and calmer adaptation of Spiekermann's typeface Meta[5][6], which was used at Mozilla's brand typeface at the time but optimized for legibility on (small) screens. With the name Fira, Mozilla wanted to communicate the concepts of fire, light and joy but in a language agnostic way to signal the project's global nature. Fira was released in 2013 initially under the Apache License and later reissued under the SIL Open Font License.
 | |
| Category | Sans-serif |
|---|---|
| Classification | Humanist |
| Designer(s) | Erik Spiekermann Ralph du Carrois |
| Commissioned by | Telefónica and Mozilla Corporation |
| Foundry | bBox Type GmbH |
| Date released | 2013 |
| License | SIL Open Font License |
| Design based on | FF Meta |
| Website | bboxtype |
| Latest release version | 4.301 |
In its initial 2013 release, Fira Sans was available in four weights with corresponding italics: light, regular, medium, and bold. In May 2014, the number of weights was increased to 16.[7] In 2015, Mozilla added a condensed style.[8] The family has a large character set including text figures and small caps.
Fira Sans is the font of choice for the Government of New Zealand[9] and the Government of Iceland.[10]
Fira Mono
edit | |
| Category | Monospaced |
|---|---|
| Designer(s) | Erik Spiekermann |
| Foundry | bBox Type GmbH |
| Date released | 2013 |
| License | SIL Open Font License |
| Design based on | FF Meta |
| Website | bboxtype |
| Latest release version | 3.206 |
Fira Sans is accompanied by a monospaced variant called Fira Mono, available in regular, medium, and bold.
Fira Code
editFira Code is an extension of the Fira Mono font containing a set of ligatures for common programming multi-character combinations. It is available in regular, medium, bold and light, and as a variable weight font.[11][12]
FiraGO
edit| Category | Sans-serif |
|---|---|
| Classification | Humanist |
| Designer(s) | Erik Spiekermann |
| Commissioned by | Here Technologies |
| Foundry | bBox Type GmbH |
| Date released | March 2018 |
| License | SIL Open Font License |
| Design based on | Fira |
| Website | bboxtype |
| Latest release version | 1.001 |
In March 2018, a multilingual extension named FiraGO was released. It has Arabic, Devanagari, Georgian, Hebrew and Thai letters in addition to Latin, Greek and Cyrillic alphabets in the typeface. It was commissioned by Here Technologies. FiraGO was released as a separate product, and will be the main font family in the group. All future updates to Fira Sans will be based on FiraGO and as of 2018, all Fira families are issued by bBox Type, which is headed by Ralph du Carrois and Anja Meiners.[13]
Fira Math
editReleased in 2019, Fira Math is a sans-serif font with Unicode math support and is developed by Stone Zeng.[14]
References
edit- ^ "870998 – [Style Guide] Type Guidelines for Firefox OS product page". Bugzilla.mozilla.org. Retrieved 2013-08-25.
- ^ Erik Spiekermann, “Fira specimen uploaded”, Spiekerblog, 30 July 2013
- ^ “Fira Sans”, Typografie.info, 20 July 2013
- ^ Patryk Adamczyk, “Introducing Feura Sans, a more legible font for mobile”, Mozilla UX Quarterly, Q2 2013 (PDF Archived 2013-06-12 at the Wayback Machine)
- ^ Erik Spiekermann: Type Is Visible Language, Beyond Tellerrand, Düsseldorf 2014, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ggQpDu63kk0
- ^ Butterick, Matthew. "Fira Sans: review". Typographica. Retrieved 14 November 2014.
- ^ “Try Out Fira Sans: a Free, Open Source Typeface Commissioned by Mozilla”, Do not Lick, 23 May 2014
- ^ "Fira Sans Condensed". Font Squirrel. Retrieved 29 February 2016.
- ^ "NZ Government: Typography". New Zealand Government. Retrieved 18 October 2018.
- ^ "Stjórnarráð Íslands - Hönnunarstaðall". Government of Iceland. Retrieved 22 January 2021.
- ^ Prokopov, Nikita (2021-03-08), tonsky/FiraCode, retrieved 10 March 2021
- ^ "Fira Code — Variable Fonts". Variable Fonts.
- ^ "bBox Type".
- ^ Zeng, Stone. "Fira Math". GitHub. Retrieved August 5, 2022.