Vigil

Fewer things, measured faster.

Eight weights on one axis. One outline.

1. ExtraLight200Choosing what not to build is the job.Display weight — 40px and up.
2. Light300Choosing what not to build is the job.
3. Regular400Choosing what not to build is the job.
4. Medium500Choosing what not to build is the job.
5. SemiBold600Choosing what not to build is the job.
6. Bold700Choosing what not to build is the job.
7. ExtraBold800Choosing what not to build is the job.
8. Black900Choosing what not to build is the job.
9. Outline—Choosing what not to build is the job.Separate display style stroked from Bold — 40px and up.

Rounded by rule, not by default.

Vigil is a free variable typeface by Keno Vigil — a geometric grotesk with a large x-height, a double-story a and a single-story g. Rounding is applied by rule — most at exposed terminals (C G S c e s, the arms of E F T, the feet of K and z), then a smaller, even radius at structural corners and on the stems of l, L, 1 and I, which keep enough edge to stay crisp. Where an I must never pass for an l, stylistic set 2 gives the l a tail and the I serifs. At 16px it reads as a clean sans. At 96px the softness becomes the signature.

ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz 0123456789 ÀÁÂÃÄÅÆÇÈÉÊËÌÍÎÏÐÑÒÓÔÕÖØŒÙÚÛÜÝÞßàáâãäåæçèéêëìíîïðñòóôõöøœùúûüýþÿ ĀāĂ㥹ĆćČčĎďĐđĒēĖėĘęĚěĞğĢģĪīĮįİıĶķĹĺĻļĽľŁłŃńŅņŇňŌōŐőŔŕŖŗŘřŚśŞşŠšŢţŤťŪūŮůŰűŲųŴŵŶŷŸŹźŻżŽž .,:;…!¡?¿·•*#/\(){}[]-–—_"“”'‘’«»‹› @&¶§©®™° +−×÷=≠<>≤≥±~^% ‰ $€£¥¢ ½¼¾ ¹²³

Latin Extended (Western and Central European). Kerning throughout.

Two companions.

A serif that shares Vigil's cap height, x-height and line box, and a set of icons drawn on Vigil's grid. Both free, on the same terms as the font.

1. 2026-09-21The airport font is Frutiger — and Heathrow ran a serifDrawn for Charles de Gaulle, released in 1976. Heathrow used a custom serif for a decade, and the testing backed it.
2. 2026-09-21The baseball jersey font isn’t a fontThe rulebook legislates six inches of height and nothing else. The letters are cut from cloth, not typed.
3. 2026-09-19The NFL font is three different answersEndzone for the brand, Tackle for the network, thirty-two numeral sets for the jerseys. The shield isn’t type at all.
4. 2026-09-19The Constitution isn’t written in a fontA clerk, a quill and a weekend. The headings really are blackletter; the body really isn’t.
5. 2026-09-14There is no VHS fontThe logo is Lee, 1976. The on-screen text was a chip, not a typeface. The look is mostly signal damage.
6. 2026-09-14Fonts similar to Avenir — and what they missAvenir broke the geometry on purpose. Substitute it with a strict geometric sans and you undo the fix.
7. 2026-09-14The Spotify font is Spotify MixSpotify Mix, built by Dinamo in 2024. It replaced Circular — it is not a custom cut of it.
8. 2026-09-14Fonts like Futura: what actually comes closeJost, Poppins and League Spartan are free. Century Gothic is a copy of a copy.
9. 2026-09-09The Nike font is Futura — with an asteriskFutura, a $35 Swoosh, and a slogan borrowed from a man facing a firing squad.
10. 2026-09-09The New York subway font isn’t the one you thinkThe signs are Helvetica. The 1970 manual wasn’t. Both are still down there.
11. 2026-09-07The worst fonts, by someone who makes fontsThe famous villains are competent typefaces with sincere origin stories. The genuinely bad ones fail elsewhere.
12. 2026-09-07The Coca-Cola logo isn’t a fontA bookkeeper’s handwriting from 1886, in the penmanship style he already used at work.
13. 2026-09-06What font is easiest to read?There is no single easiest font. Size, spacing and line length decide more than the typeface does.
14. 2026-09-06The Stranger Things font is ITC BenguiatDrawn by Ed Benguiat in 1977. The brief was twelve Stephen King paperbacks in a padded envelope.
15. 2026-09-04License plate fonts: shaped by a die, aimed at a forgerDrawn for a stamping die, a camera, and someone with a roll of black tape.
16. 2026-09-04Highway Gothic vs Clearview: two fonts went to war over American road signsApproved in 2004, killed in 2016, revived in 2018 — with the government refusing to endorse it.
17. 2026-09-04Geometric sans serif fonts: a field guideHow to spot one in four seconds, why the strict ones are hard to read, and which are actually worth using.
18. 2026-09-04Typeface vs font: the distinction that stopped mattering in 1985It was a real difference once, and it described a real object. Here is what it meant.
19. 2026-09-04A vigil is what you keep when you refuse to go to sleep on something.Ten years of a calendar block that said MAKE FONT, and why it finally shipped.
20. 2026-08-28A century of circles: the geometric groteskErbar, Futura and Kabel arrived within a year of each other. The idea never left.
21. 2026-08-21Soft corners: a short history of the rounded sansFrom a car company's letterhead to every app icon, and what most rounded fonts get wrong.

Questions, answered.

Using it takes about a minute.

Three ways in, depending on what you are. Every snippet below is real and copyable — nothing here needs an account.

<link rel="stylesheet" href="https://www.vigilfont.com/vigil.css">

@font-face {
  font-family: "Vigil";
  src: url("https://www.vigilfont.com/fonts/Vigil-wght-.woff2?v=1.005") format("woff2");
  font-weight: 200 900;
  font-display: swap;
}
@font-face {
  font-family: "Vigil";
  src: url("https://www.vigilfont.com/fonts/Vigil-Italic-wght-.woff2?v=1.005") format("woff2");
  font-weight: 200 900;
  font-style: italic;
  font-display: swap;
}

Free. Forever. No email.

Vigil Serif has its own package, statics and variable: download Vigil Serif.

16 weights ready to install at the top of the folder · variable font, OTF and web files tucked underneath · plain-English install guide included. Statics are hinted for Windows.

@font-face { font-family: "Vigil"; src: url("https://www.vigilfont.com/fonts/Vigil-wght-.woff2?v=1.005") format("woff2"); font-weight: 200 900; font-display: swap; }
@font-face { font-family: "Vigil"; src: url("https://www.vigilfont.com/fonts/Vigil-Italic-wght-.woff2?v=1.005") format("woff2"); font-weight: 200 900; font-style: italic; font-display: swap; }

SIL Open Font License 1.1 — use it anywhere, in anything, commercial or not. No attribution required. No account. No newsletter.

Vigil in the wild.

In use — telljoan.com Joan, a biographer that phones your parents.

Every word is Vigil Serif or Vigil: serif for what Joan says, sans for what you press. Plus the one weight that fixed the colour.

Read the case study →

If you have set something in Vigil — a site, a menu, a poster, a school project — send it. Good uses go up here, credited and linked. Missing a glyph or a weight? Ask for it in the same box.

Pass it on.

Free typefaces travel by word of mouth. If Vigil is useful to you, send it to someone who sets type.