Cal Sans
The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog 0123456789 {}[]()<>=!&|
The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog 0123456789 {}[]()<>=!&|
Set in Cal Sans itself, from the preview the app ships.
Cal Sans is a geometric sans-serif typeface designed for display, particularly large point sizes. It was created by Mark Davis for Cal.com by Peer Richelsen and Bailey Pumfleet, with interface design by Ciarán Hanrahan, and is open source. The design aims for a serious and geometric aesthetic, ensuring circular shapes throughout the “cal.com” lettering.
To contribute, see github.com/calcom/font.
Introduction
Cal Sans is a geometric sans-serif tuned for display, that is, large point sizes. It is an Open Source typeface to adorn the headlines and interfaces of Cal.com, a company founded by Peer Richelsen and Bailey Pumfleet and interface design by Ciarán Hanrahan.
The basis of Cal Sans is my initial answer to what my Futura would be. It fit well with Peer’s brief, for something serious and and geometric so that the letters of “cal.com” would have circular shapes throughout. It was decided early on that it be open source for all!
Design Philosophy and Unique Characteristics
As this design was created for display, and is currently a single static font, an unusual approach is taken for its texture and default typography. Letters are intentionally spaced to be extremely close for tight headlines “out of the box.” For smaller subheadings, positive letter spacing must be applied. There are currently no other Open Source geometric sanserifs geared as intentionally for “tight but not touching” typesetting—as it is more labor intensive to produce with accurate texture. But for typesetters, if they would letterspace another design as tight as Cal Sans, the results would not be as consistent.
So, for end users, more flexibility is available when the tightest typesetting extreme edge case is gracefully addressed. One may create looser typesetting as needed.
Features
While the default design is fairly ahistorical, there are historical design options. Using Stylistic Set 01 (ss01), Futura-specific alternates can be deployed. Including diacritic variants, there are 48 alternates for this set.
I give credit to Rasmus Andersson implementing in his design Inter Character Variants to offer more control in website typography. Cal Sans also employs this feature. There are six Character Variants in Cal Sans, for Cc (cv01), j (cv02), t (cv03), u (cv04), 0 (cv05), and 1 (cv06).
In celebration of Futura’s geometrically extreme ligatures, Cal Sans has an experimental approach to ligatures, Stylistic Set 02 (ss02) is identical to ss01, but also combines eligible letters as historical Futura ligatures. This is included as a stylistic set and not as discretionary ligatures because default characters really do not match these historical ligatures. (But they were included anyway!)
Probably the most novel OpenType feature of Cal Sans is its third Stylistic Set (ss03). The best way to exhibit the need of ss03 is to see how “tight but not touching” affects spacing with consecutive diagonals. Some designers would never want their letters to overlap or touch in a headline, or very large title.
Diagonals’ corners are kerned from eachother, and some might say this causes more problems than the “stock” kerning solves. Such letter combinations aren’t…incredibly common. But they are not rare, nor is spacing letters in a way that is sometimes consistent a goal of mine. But, I see merits in both paths. So, ss03 overrides diagonal-to-diagonal kerning pairs with new ones that let diagonal corners “crash.”
I don’t know of any other typefaces that has many kerning options, hopefully this feature is of use! Thanks to Tal Leming’s OpenType Cook Book for technical details.
— Mark Davis and Cal.com Inc., on Google Fonts
Typecask has no deep links yet. Open the app and search for “Cal Sans”.
License
License of github.com/google/fonts/ofl/calsans: Copyright 2021 The Cal Sans Project Authors (https://github.com/calcom/font) This Font Software is licensed under the SIL Open Font License, Version 1.1. This license is copied below, and is also available with a FAQ at: https://openfontlicense.org ----------------------------------------------------------- SIL OPEN FONT LICENSE Version 1.1 - 26 February 2007 ----------------------------------------------------------- PREAMBLE The goals of the Open Font License (OFL) are to stimulate worldwide development of collaborative font projects, to support the font creation efforts of academic and linguistic communities, and to provide a free and open framework in which fonts may be shared and improved in partnership with others. The OFL allows the licensed fonts to be used, studied, modified and redistributed freely as long as they are not sold by themselves. The fonts, including any derivative works, can be bundled, embedded, redistributed and/or sold with any software provided that any reserved names are not used by derivative works. The fonts and derivatives, however, cannot be released under any other type of license. The requirement for fonts to remain under this license does not apply to any document created using the fonts or their derivatives. DEFINITIONS "Font Software" refers to the set of files released by the Copyright Holder(s) under this license and clearly marked as such. This may include source files, build scripts and documentation. "Reserved Font Name" refers to any names specified as such after the copyright statement(s). "Original Version" refers to the collection of Font Software components as distributed by the Copyright Holder(s). "Modified Version" refers to any derivative made by adding to, deleting, or substituting -- in part or in whole -- any of the components of the Original Version, by changing formats or by porting the Font Software to a new environment. "Author" refers to any designer, engineer, programmer, technical writer or other person who contributed to the Font Software. PERMISSION & CONDITIONS Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of the Font Software, to use, study, copy, merge, embed, modify, redistribute, and sell modified and unmodified copies of the Font Software, subject to the following conditions: 1) Neither the Font Software nor any of its individual components, in Original or Modified Versions, may be sold by itself. 2) Original or Modified Versions of the Font Software may be bundled, redistributed and/or sold with any software, provided that each copy contains the above copyright notice and this license. These can be included either as stand-alone text files, human-readable headers or in the appropriate machine-readable metadata fields within text or binary files as long as those fields can be easily viewed by the user. 3) No Modified Version of the Font Software may use the Reserved Font Name(s) unless explicit written permission is granted by the corresponding Copyright Holder. This restriction only applies to the primary font name as presented to the users. 4) The name(s) of the Copyright Holder(s) or the Author(s) of the Font Software shall not be used to promote, endorse or advertise any Modified Version, except to acknowledge the contribution(s) of the Copyright Holder(s) and the Author(s) or with their explicit written permission. 5) The Font Software, modified or unmodified, in part or in whole, must be distributed entirely under this license, and must not be distributed under any other license. The requirement for fonts to remain under this license does not apply to any document created using the Font Software. TERMINATION This license becomes null and void if any of the above conditions are not met. DISCLAIMER THE FONT SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO ANY WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT OF COPYRIGHT, PATENT, TRADEMARK, OR OTHER RIGHT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE COPYRIGHT HOLDER BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, INCLUDING ANY GENERAL, SPECIAL, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF THE USE OR INABILITY TO USE THE FONT SOFTWARE OR FROM OTHER DEALINGS IN THE FONT SOFTWARE.