Fira Sans is a

humanist Humanism is a philosophical stance that emphasizes the individual and social potential, and agency of human beings, whom it considers the starting point for serious moral and philosophical inquiry. The meaning of the term "humanism" ha ...

sans-serif In typography and lettering, a sans-serif, sans serif (), gothic, or simply sans letterform is one that does not have extending features called "serifs" at the end of strokes. Sans-serif typefaces tend to have less stroke width variation than ...

typeface A typeface (or font family) is a design of Letter (alphabet), letters, Numerical digit, numbers and other symbols, to be used in printing or for electronic display. Most typefaces include variations in size (e.g., 24 point), weight (e.g., light, ...

Erik Spiekermann Erik Spiekermann (born 30 May 1947) is a German typographer, designer and writer. He is an honorary professor at the University of the Arts Bremen and ArtCenter College of Design. Biography Spiekermann studied art history at Berlin's Free Uni ...

, Ralph du Carrois, Anja Meiners, Botio Nikoltchev of Carrois Type Design, and Patryk Adamczyk of

Mozilla Corporation The Mozilla Corporation is a wholly owned subsidiary of the Mozilla Foundation that coordinates and integrates the development of Internet-related applications such as the Firefox web browser, by a global community of open-source developers, s ...

. The typeface was originally commissioned by

Telefónica , S.A. () is a Spanish multinational telecommunications company with registered office and headquarters located in two different places, both in Madrid, Spain. It is one of the largest telephone operators and mobile network providers in the ...

and

as part of the joint effort during the development of

Firefox OS Firefox OS (project name: ''Boot to Gecko'', also known as ''B2G'') is a discontinued Open-source software, open-source operating system made for smartphones, tablet computers, smart TVs, and Matchstick TV, dongles designed by Mozilla and exte ...

. It is a slightly wider and calmer adaptation of Spiekermann's typeface ''

Meta Meta most commonly refers to: * Meta (prefix), a common affix and word in English ( in Greek) * Meta Platforms, an American multinational technology conglomerate (formerly ''Facebook, Inc.'') Meta or META may also refer to: Businesses * Meta (ac ...

'', which was used as 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 with connotatively agnostic language intended to signal the project's global nature. Fira was released in 2013 initially under the

Apache License The Apache License is a permissive free software license written by the Apache Software Foundation (ASF). It allows users to use the software for any purpose, to distribute it, to modify it, and to distribute modified versions of the software ...

, and later reissued under the

SIL Open Font License The SIL Open Font License (or OFL in short) is one of the major open font licenses, which allows embedding, or "bundling", of the font in commercially sold products. OFL is a free and open source license. It was created by SIL Global, the ...

. In its first 2013 release, Fira Sans was available in four weights with corresponding

italics In typography, italic type is a cursive font based on a stylised form of calligraphic handwriting. Along with blackletter and roman type, it served as one of the major typefaces in the history of Western typography. Owing to the influence f ...

: light, regular, medium, and bold. In May 2014, the number of weights was increased to 16. In 2015, Mozilla added a condensed style. The family has a large character set that includes

text figures Text figures (also known as non-lining, lowercase, old style, ranging, hanging, medieval, billing, or antique figures or numerals) are numerals designed with varying heights in a fashion that resembles a typical line of running text, hence the ...

and

small caps In typography, small caps (short for small capitals) are grapheme, characters typeset with glyphs that resemble uppercase letters but reduced in height and weight close to the surrounding lowercase letters or text figures. Small caps are used i ...

. In 2016, with version 4.2, the Mozilla Corporation ended their participation in the Fira Sans project; however, the project was continued by

Berlin Berlin ( ; ) is the Capital of Germany, capital and largest city of Germany, by both area and List of cities in Germany by population, population. With 3.7 million inhabitants, it has the List of cities in the European Union by population withi ...

-based foundry bBox Type GmbH and its partners. That same year, bBox Type GmbH released Fira Sans version 4.301—the final iteration of Fira Sans—and announced that “any future developments will be based on

FiraGO 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. The typeface was originally commissioned by Telefóni ...

.” Fira Sans is the font of choice for the Government of Iceland.

FiraGO

FiraGO is a multilingual extension of Fira Sans that includes

Arabic Arabic (, , or , ) is a Central Semitic languages, Central Semitic language of the Afroasiatic languages, Afroasiatic language family spoken primarily in the Arab world. The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) assigns lang ...

Devanagari Devanagari ( ; in script: , , ) is an Indic script used in the Indian subcontinent. It is a left-to-right abugida (a type of segmental Writing systems#Segmental systems: alphabets, writing system), based on the ancient ''Brāhmī script, Brā ...

, Georgian,

Hebrew Hebrew (; ''ʿÎbrit'') is a Northwest Semitic languages, Northwest Semitic language within the Afroasiatic languages, Afroasiatic language family. A regional dialect of the Canaanite languages, it was natively spoken by the Israelites and ...

, and Thai letters, in addition to

Latin Latin ( or ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic languages, Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally spoken by the Latins (Italic tribe), Latins in Latium (now known as Lazio), the lower Tiber area aroun ...

Greek Greek may refer to: Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe: *Greeks, an ethnic group *Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family **Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor of all kno ...

, and

Cyrillic The Cyrillic script ( ) is a writing system used for various languages across Eurasia. It is the designated national script in various Slavic, Turkic, Mongolic, Uralic, Caucasian and Iranic-speaking countries in Southeastern Europe, Ea ...

alphabets An alphabet is a standard set of letter (alphabet), letters written to represent particular sounds in a spoken language. Specifically, letters largely correspond to phonemes as the smallest sound segments that can distinguish one word from a ...

in the typeface. In 2016, the development of FiraGO was initiated after geo data provider

Here Technologies Here Technologies (stylized and trade name as HERE and here) is a multinational group based in The Netherlands specialized in mapping technologies, location data, and related automotive services to individuals and companies. It is majority- ...

selected Fira Sans as their corporate typeface, but needed the typeface to be usable for “broader language applications, especially in map applications.” Subsequently, Here Technologies commissioned bBox Type GmbH for a global script extension to Fira Sans, which was expanded into FiraGO project. Based on Fira Sans 4.3, 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.

Fira Mono

Fira Sans is accompanied by a

monospaced A monospaced font, also called a fixed-pitch, fixed-width, or non-proportional font, is a font whose letters and characters each occupy the same amount of horizontal space. This contrasts with Typeface#Proportion, variable-width fonts, where t ...

variant called Fira Mono, available in the weights of regular, medium, and bold.

Fira Code

Fira Code is an extension of the Fira Mono font that contains a set of

ligatures Ligature may refer to: Language * Ligature (writing), a combination of two or more letters into a single symbol (typography and calligraphy) * Ligature (grammar), a morpheme that links two words Medicine * Ligature (medicine), a piece of suture us ...

for common programming multi-character combinations. It is available in regular, medium, bold, and light, and additionally as a variable weight font.

Fira Math

Released in 2019, Fira Math is a sans-serif font with Unicode math support and is developed by Stone Zeng.

Firava

Firava is an adaptation of Fira Sans into a variable version.

References

Patryk Adamczyk, “Introducing Feura Sans, a more legible font for mobile”, ''Mozilla UX Quarterly'', Q2 2013
PDF
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��, ''Typografie.info'', 20 July 2013 Erik Spiekermann, �
Fira specimen uploaded
��, ''Spiekerblog'', 30 July 2013 �
Try Out Fira Sans: a Free, Open Source Typeface Commissioned by Mozilla
��, ''Do not Lick'', 23 May 2014

External links

Mozilla's Fira Type Family

Home of Fira
* * * * *
Fira Sans
on

Google Fonts Google Fonts (formerly known as Google Web Fonts) is a computer font and web font service owned by Google. This includes Free-software license, free and open source font families, an interactive web directory for browsing the library, and Applica ...

Fira Sans Condensed
on

Fira Sans Extra Condensed
on

Fira Mono
on

{{Free software typefaces Humanist sans-serif typefaces Free software Unicode typefaces Firefox OS Typefaces with text figures Typefaces designed by Erik Spiekermann Monospaced typefaces Typefaces and fonts introduced in 2013 IPA typefaces