Adobe has released Source Han Sans, an open source typeface developed with Google. Source Han Sans supports Japanese, Chinese and Korean, as well as Latin, Greek and Cyrillic alphabets. The new typeface is available in seven weights in full fonts, as well as region-specific subsets, a total of 42 typefaces.

Source Han Sans, designed for screen devices and print, provides designers one uniform font to use in print and Web files, no matter the language, says Adobe. While the Japanese kanji, Chinese hanzi and Korean hanja characters share historical derivation, the typefaces have typically been individually created to support each language, with separate sets for Traditional and Simplified Chinese. Source Han Sans marks the first open source font family to support each of the languages, as well as regional variants, within the same font family, supporting languages spoken by 1.5 billion people, according to Adobe.

In order to account for all regional variations, Adobe designed 65,535 glyphs for each font, the maximum number for the OpenType format. The development and design took more than three years, with a team of more than 100 people. Contracted foundry partners across East Asia (Changzhou SinoType, Iwata, and Sandoll Communication were also involved in the development.

[Image courtesy: Adobe]