The Martel Sans typeface is designed for typesetting immersive-style documents.

Martel Sans is available in 7 styles
By Dan Reynolds & Mathieu Réguer

Martel Sans is a humanist-style sans serif and a libre font development project. I designed it together with Mathieu Réguer; the fonts are available, libre and gratis. As a typeface, Martel Sans is designed for setting immersive-style documents; it may be be used to for long passages of text in languages written with either the Latin or the Devanagari scripts – including Indian languages like Hindi, Marathi, Nepali and Sanskrit, as well as most European languages.

As a student at the University of Reading in 2007–2008, I drew a small family of Latin and Devanagari type as part of the MA Typeface Design course. These were serif letters, not sans, but they were the first works I gave the Martel name to. In early 2009, I expanded the number of Latin-script fonts from that project, releasing them through Linotype under the name Malabar. Malabar went on to win several design awards, which was really cool.

In 2014, I finally revisited the Devanagari portion of my old MA coursework. I completed the single Devanagari face I initially designed at Reading, and then expanded it into a seven weight family. These fonts, called Martel Devanagari, were released as OpenSource fonts in 2014. The Devanagari portions of Martel Sans fonts may be used together with Martel Devanagari.

While Martel Sans is ready for use today, you might want to view the fonts as public beta software. Although the letters’ sidebearings have been carefully set, the font files currently include no kerning data. The fonts also have only one set of figures (tabular lining) – at least if you don’t count the Devanagari figures. Future updates will include proportional lining figures, oldstyle figures, etc. Small caps are also in the works. The Martel Sans family currently includes seven weights. All of the fonts are upright; italics may be developed at a later time.

The typeface name “Martel” comes from Charles Martel, a Frankish statesman and military leader in the eighth century; Charlemagne was his grandson.

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Invert background

Every typeface has its own inherent rhythm, created by the designer who made the font. With typefaces that are intended for use in body text, it is primarily this rhythm that will make the typeface readable. But there are additional factors that go into the making of a good text face: the space between the letters, the degree of contrast in the letters’ strokes, as well as the x-height and relative size of the whitespace inside of the letters. Not every typeface that works well in text will apply all of these factors in the same way, but all good ones will have many of these features in common. 1234567890

श्रावणात म्हणजे वर्षा ऋतुमध्ये प्रातःकाळी चौदा भारदस्त वाघ, पंधरा सिंह, आठ लांडगे, नऊ बैल, छोटुसा पांढरा उंदिर, खारूताई इत्यादी प्राणी, पक्षी एकत्र झऱ्याजवळ फिरत असत. तेथे अज्ञात मगरीस प्रवेश निषिद्ध असे.

36 px

Every typeface has its own inherent rhythm, created by the designer who made the font. With typefaces that are intended for use in body text, it is primarily this rhythm that will make the typeface readable. But there are additional factors that go into the making of a good text face: the space between the letters, the degree of contrast in the letters’ strokes, as well as the x-height and relative size of the whitespace inside of the letters. Not every typeface that works well in text will apply all of these factors in the same way, but all good ones will have many of these features in common. 1234567890

श्रावणात म्हणजे वर्षा ऋतुमध्ये प्रातःकाळी चौदा भारदस्त वाघ, पंधरा सिंह, आठ लांडगे, नऊ बैल, छोटुसा पांढरा उंदिर, खारूताई इत्यादी प्राणी, पक्षी एकत्र झऱ्याजवळ फिरत असत. तेथे अज्ञात मगरीस प्रवेश निषिद्ध असे.

32 px

Every typeface has its own inherent rhythm, created by the designer who made the font. With typefaces that are intended for use in body text, it is primarily this rhythm that will make the typeface readable. But there are additional factors that go into the making of a good text face: the space between the letters, the degree of contrast in the letters’ strokes, as well as the x-height and relative size of the whitespace inside of the letters. Not every typeface that works well in text will apply all of these factors in the same way, but all good ones will have many of these features in common. 1234567890

श्रावणात म्हणजे वर्षा ऋतुमध्ये प्रातःकाळी चौदा भारदस्त वाघ, पंधरा सिंह, आठ लांडगे, नऊ बैल, छोटुसा पांढरा उंदिर, खारूताई इत्यादी प्राणी, पक्षी एकत्र झऱ्याजवळ फिरत असत. तेथे अज्ञात मगरीस प्रवेश निषिद्ध असे.

26 px

Every typeface has its own inherent rhythm, created by the designer who made the font. With typefaces that are intended for use in body text, it is primarily this rhythm that will make the typeface readable. But there are additional factors that go into the making of a good text face: the space between the letters, the degree of contrast in the letters’ strokes, as well as the x-height and relative size of the whitespace inside of the letters. Not every typeface that works well in text will apply all of these factors in the same way, but all good ones will have many of these features in common. 1234567890

श्रावणात म्हणजे वर्षा ऋतुमध्ये प्रातःकाळी चौदा भारदस्त वाघ, पंधरा सिंह, आठ लांडगे, नऊ बैल, छोटुसा पांढरा उंदिर, खारूताई इत्यादी प्राणी, पक्षी एकत्र झऱ्याजवळ फिरत असत. तेथे अज्ञात मगरीस प्रवेश निषिद्ध असे.

22 px

Every typeface has its own inherent rhythm, created by the designer who made the font. With typefaces that are intended for use in body text, it is primarily this rhythm that will make the typeface readable. But there are additional factors that go into the making of a good text face: the space between the letters, the degree of contrast in the letters’ strokes, as well as the x-height and relative size of the whitespace inside of the letters. Not every typeface that works well in text will apply all of these factors in the same way, but all good ones will have many of these features in common. 1234567890

श्रावणात म्हणजे वर्षा ऋतुमध्ये प्रातःकाळी चौदा भारदस्त वाघ, पंधरा सिंह, आठ लांडगे, नऊ बैल, छोटुसा पांढरा उंदिर, खारूताई इत्यादी प्राणी, पक्षी एकत्र झऱ्याजवळ फिरत असत. तेथे अज्ञात मगरीस प्रवेश निषिद्ध असे.

18 px

Every typeface has its own inherent rhythm, created by the designer who made the font. With typefaces that are intended for use in body text, it is primarily this rhythm that will make the typeface readable. But there are additional factors that go into the making of a good text face: the space between the letters, the degree of contrast in the letters’ strokes, as well as the x-height and relative size of the whitespace inside of the letters. Not every typeface that works well in text will apply all of these factors in the same way, but all good ones will have many of these features in common. 1234567890

श्रावणात म्हणजे वर्षा ऋतुमध्ये प्रातःकाळी चौदा भारदस्त वाघ, पंधरा सिंह, आठ लांडगे, नऊ बैल, छोटुसा पांढरा उंदिर, खारूताई इत्यादी प्राणी, पक्षी एकत्र झऱ्याजवळ फिरत असत. तेथे अज्ञात मगरीस प्रवेश निषिद्ध असे.

14 px
Invert background

Every typeface has its own inherent rhythm, created by the designer who made the font. With typefaces that are intended for use in body text, it is primarily this rhythm that will make the typeface readable …

80 %

Every typeface has its own inherent rhythm, created by the designer who made the font. With typefaces that are intended for use in body text, it is primarily this rhythm that will make the typeface readable …

60 %

Every typeface has its own inherent rhythm, created by the designer who made the font. With typefaces that are intended for use in body text, it is primarily this rhythm that will make the typeface readable …

40 %

Every typeface has its own inherent rhythm, created by the designer who made the font. With typefaces that are intended for use in body text, it is primarily this rhythm that will make the typeface readable …

20 %

Try Martel Sans Specimen PDF

Try in Typecast
  • Size
    • 20px
  • Leading
  • Color
    • #111111
  • Background
    • #ffffff
  • Columns
  • Width
Play with the sample text or just type your own …

Every typeface has its own inherent rhythm, created by the designer who made the font. With typefaces that are intended for use in body text, it is primarily this rhythm that will make the typeface readable. But there are additional factors that go into the making of a good text face: the space between the letters, the degree of contrast in the letters’ strokes, as well as the x-height and relative size of the whitespace inside of the letters. Not every typeface that works well in text will apply all of these factors in the same way, but all good ones will have many of these features in common. 1234567890

Get Martel Sans for free on:

Github Google Fonts