Karla
A friendly grotesque tuned for small UI sizes
Type specimen
The specimen uses the official Google Fonts subset when available, otherwise a font installed on this device. If neither exists the browser falls back to a system font, so treat the official download page as authoritative.
About this font
Karla is a grotesque sans by British designer Jonathan Pinhorn, first released in 2011 and one of Google Fonts' earliest and most used interface-friendly faces; the project moved from GPL to SIL OFL 1.1 in 2019. It keeps a grotesque skeleton - near-uniform strokes, quirky single-storey a/g - but reads softer than Inter and more characterful than Roboto, staying crisp at small UI sizes. The 2018 overhaul added multiple weights, italics, small caps and tabular figures. A solid Latin companion to Source Han Sans and PuHuiTi.
Where it works best
Great for English UI body, forms, labels, mobile interfaces, brand secondary type, data paragraphs. Use 400/500 body, 600/700 controls. Pairs evenly with Chinese sans; warmer than Inter, good for lifestyle and education products.
| Weights | 7 |
|---|---|
| First release | 2011 |
| Designed by | Jonathan Pinhorn |
| Rights holder | Jonathan Pinhorn |
| Scripts | Latin |
| Licence | OFL SIL Open Font License 1.1 |
| Variable font | Supported |
Licence and commercial boundaries
Licence：SIL Open Font License 1.1
The dominant permissive licence for open fonts: free commercial use, modification, embedding and redistribution. Its core duties are that derivatives stay under OFL without the Reserved Font Name, the licence text travels with the files, and the fonts themselves are never sold standalone. Works typeset with them belong wholly to you.
SIL OFL 1.1. Free for commercial use everywhere, embeddable and derivable; derivatives drop the name.
Hard restrictions
- Derivatives drop the name
- No standalone sales
Official channels
- Go to official download → https://fonts.google.com/specimen/Karla
- Read the original licence → https://github.com/google/fonts/tree/main/ofl/karla
Last verified：2026-09-07
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