The debut of a new font may not seem like much cause for celebration these days, but when the company is Adobe and the font in question marks the first time they've released an open source type family, we're inclined to pay attention.
Adobe has announced the release of a new, free open source type family called Source Sans Pro. After many requests over the years for a typeface specifically tailored to the open source community, Adobe has finally chosen to make another important contribution this week.
Veteran Mac users will remember that Adobe pioneered desktop publishing on Apple's platform, with PostScript Type 1 fonts a closely-guarded trade secret prior to 1990, when tools were publicly released for developing and producing high-quality type.
Adobe's contributions to computer-based typography certainly don't end there -- the company also collaborated with Microsoft for the OpenType standard as well as partnering with SourceForge to maintain their Open@Adobe projects.
"I believe that the world of type design and typography has benefited greatly from Adobe’s contributions in the arena of type technology," writes Adobe's Paul Hunt, the designer of Source Sans Pro, on the company's Typblography page. "In adding to this legacy, I am proud to announce that today marks another milestone as Adobe makes yet another type resource freely available by releasing the Source Sans Pro family as our first-ever open source type family."
"Source Sans is a classic grotesque typeface with a simple, unassuming design," Adobe's Nicole Minoza explains. "The design is intended to work well in user interfaces. This release includes 12 typefaces. Future releases will add support for Greek and Cyrillic scripts, a related monowidth family, and other features as well."
Source Sans Pro can be downloaded directly from the aforementioned Open@Adobe project page and also joins a new Adobe Original called Leander Script, which is now available from the Adobe Type Store.
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