Free trial fonts

Schriftgiesserei / Zürich / gegr. 2016

Type drawn at the
speed it wants
to be drawn.

Eleven families, sixty-five styles, three people. We release a family when it is finished, which is roughly once every eighteen months and never in September.

A studio wall pinned edge to edge with large printed type specimen sheets

The library

Six families shown. Five more are in the trial pack.

  1. 01

    Halbfett Grotesk

    The house workhorse. Drawn for signage first, screens second, and it shows in the counters.

    18 stylesWeight, Width2019
  2. 02

    Halbfett Text

    For long settings at 9 to 12 point. Slightly tall x-height, deliberately dull.

    12 stylesWeight, Optical size2020
  3. 03

    Halbfett Display

    Tight, high-contrast, unusable below 40 point. That is the intention.

    9 stylesWeight2021
  4. 04

    Halbfett Mono

    Fixed pitch with real italics, drawn for code review rather than for terminals.

    8 stylesWeight2022
  5. 05

    Halbfett Stencil

    The bridge axis moves the cuts, not the strokes. Nobody asked for this. We enjoyed it.

    4 stylesWeight, Bridge2023
  6. 06

    Halbfett Serif

    A quiet transitional. Our first serif in nine years and our slowest project.

    14 stylesWeight, Optical size2024

Eight weights, one skeleton

Halbfett Grotesk, set at 96 point. The name of the foundry is the sixth one.

  1. Schriftgiesserei100 Thin
  2. Schriftgiesserei200 Extraleicht
  3. Schriftgiesserei300 Leicht
  4. Schriftgiesserei400 Normal
  5. Schriftgiesserei500 Kräftig
  6. Schriftgiesserei600 Halbfett
  7. Schriftgiesserei700 Fett
  8. Schriftgiesserei800 Extrafett
ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ0123456789ÄÖÜÆØÅßfiflÐÞ&@#§
Loose metal type sorts spilled on a steel surface
Sorts from the old Zürich foundry, kept for reference.
A desk with proof sheets, a loupe and a red marker
Proofing Serif, third pass, week forty-one.
A proofing press with a fresh black print on the bed
Every release is pulled once on the press.

Licences, in plain terms

One page, no legal counsel required. Buy once, use forever; we have never revoked a licence and would not know how.

Desktop

per style, 5 users

CHF 60

Install and set anything. Print, logos, packaging. No annual renewal, ever.

Web

per style, 500k views / month

CHF 60

Self-hosted WOFF2. We do not run a CDN and will not watch your traffic.

App

per style, per app

CHF 240

Embed in a shipped binary. Updates included for the life of the app.

Broadcast

per family, per production

CHF 480

Titles, lower thirds, motion. One production, unlimited episodes.

Students and typography courses pay nothing. Write from an institutional address and say what the class is; we will send the whole library.

Three people, Rämistrasse 40

Vera Zumbrunn draws. Ilja Brand engineers and hints. Sara Moretti answers everything else, usually the same day.

Studio
Rämistrasse 40, 8001 Zürich
By appointment
Custom work
Two commissions a year. The 2027 slots are open.

Three things we test before release

A family ships when these three pass. There is no schedule that overrules them.

01

Spacing, at text size

Set the same paragraph at nine point in every style and read it on paper. Screen proofing hides spacing faults that paper finds in a second.

02

Hinting and rendering

Every style through four rasterisers at eight sizes. We keep the ugly screenshots and fix them rather than filing them.

03

The awkward pairs

Two hundred kern pairs nobody remembers to check, including the ones with quotes, and the Swiss ones with numbers in them.

Character set

What is in every family. Extended Latin as standard; Greek and Cyrillic on the Grotesk only.

  1. Latin, basic230All familiesISO 8859-1 and then some
  2. Latin, extended412All familiesCentral and eastern European
  3. Greek188GroteskMonotonic
  4. Cyrillic204GroteskRussian and Ukrainian
  5. Figures5 setsAll familiesLining, oldstyle, tabular, fractions, superior
  6. Arrows and symbols96All familiesDrawn, not borrowed

Licensing questions

Can I test before buying?
Yes. The trial pack is the full library with a limited character set, it is free, and it does not expire. We have never asked anyone to delete one.
What counts as one app?
One product on one storefront. Ship it on three platforms and it is still one app; ship a second product and it is a second licence.
Do you do exclusive commissions?
Two a year. Exclusivity is for five years, after which the family joins the library unless you buy the extension.
What if my traffic goes over?
Nothing happens automatically. Write to us at the end of the year and we will invoice the difference at the same rate.