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Besley

Designed By

Owen Earl

12 Styles Serif

The pleasure
of a well-set
page.

Besley · Regular

Compare this serif family in headings and a continuous reading sample.

12 styles available. Compare the specimens below, or enter your own text.

Download Besley ↓

TTF · SIL Open Font License 1.1

Set Your Own Text

Change the style and size to compare the letterforms.

Fresh farm eggs, sold daily

A Page In Besley

Besley · Regular

Headings, labels and running text.

Notes From The Reading Room

The reading room opens onto a quiet courtyard. Along the shelves, small handwritten labels mark the collections. A visitor leaves a book open beside the window, keeping a place for the next reader.

A heading marks the next chapter. The margins leave room for a note while the text continues across the page.

12 Styles,
One Family

Every available style is shown below in its own font file.

Regular400

Fresh farm eggs, sold daily

Italic400

Fresh farm eggs, sold daily

Medium500

Fresh farm eggs, sold daily

Medium Italic500

Fresh farm eggs, sold daily

Semi Bold600

Fresh farm eggs, sold daily

Semi Bold Italic600

Fresh farm eggs, sold daily

Bold700

Fresh farm eggs, sold daily

Bold Italic700

Fresh farm eggs, sold daily

Extra Bold800

Fresh farm eggs, sold daily

Extra Bold Italic800

Fresh farm eggs, sold daily

Black900

Fresh farm eggs, sold daily

Black Italic900

Fresh farm eggs, sold daily

Robert Besley’s Clarendon is where this one starts. Owen Earl, who publishes as indestructible type*, redrew it as an antique slab serif and rounded the corners off very slightly. In a paragraph you would hardly see that. Set a word at poster size, though, and the slabs lose some of their hardness and look a little worn, which is the warmth Earl said he was after.

There are 6 weights, Regular at 400 through Black at 900, and each one has its own italic, 12 files in all. The heavy end is the fun part. Black Besley is squat and dark and would sit well on a jar label or across the top of a deli menu.

It is a wide face too. A paragraph of it needs nearly 14% more line than Georgia would for the same words, so give the column room or drop the size a step.

Besley has ligatures and contextual alternates, with old style and tabular figures and 1 stylistic set. Prices on that menu line up in the tabular ones.

Latin and Latin Extended, 438 characters. Google Fonts added the family in January 2021.

Besley type specimen with letters and figures
Besley · Type Specimen

Characters & Figures

438 glyphs reported in the reference style. This selection shows 400 recorded characters.

ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ
abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz
0123456789 & @ ? !

View The Recorded Character Selection
!"#$%&'()*+,-./0123456789:;<=>?@ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ[\]^_`abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz{|}~¡¢£¤¥¦§¨©ª«¬®¯°±²³´µ·¸¹º»¼½¾¿ÀÁÂÃÄÅÆÇÈÉÊËÌÍÎÏÐÑÒÓÔÕÖ×ØÙÚÛÜÝÞßàáâãäåæçèéêëìíîïðñòóôõö÷øùúûüýþÿĀāĂ㥹ĆćĈĉĊċČčĎďĐđĒēĔĕĖėĘęĚěĜĝĞğĠġĢģĤĥĦħĨĩĪīĬĭĮįİıIJijĴĵĶķĸĹĺĻļĽľĿŀŁłŃńŅņŇňʼnŊŋŌōŎŏŐőŒœŔŕŖŗŘřŚśŜŝŞşŠšŢţŤťŦŧŨũŪūŬŭŮůŰűŲųŴŵŶŷŸŹźŻżŽžſȒȓȘșȚțȷˆ˘˙˚˛˜˝̧̨̣̦̀́̂̃̄̆̇̈̊̋̌̑̒ΔΩμπẀẁẂẃẄẅẆẇẈẉẞỲỳ‐‑‒–—―‘’‚“”„†‡•…‰‱‹›‾⁄⁴€∂∅∏∑−∕∙√∞∫≈≠

The Font Files

Download
Besley

12 TTF styles with the accompanying CSS, README and license information.

Download ZIP · 386 KB ↓
Version
2.001
License
SIL Open Font License 1.1
Read The Font License ↗

Install On Your Computer

Extract the ZIP first. On Windows, select the font files and choose Install from the context menu. On macOS, open the files in Font Book and choose Install.

Use On A Website

Keep the font files and the included stylesheet together. Update the stylesheet path to match your project.

<link rel="stylesheet"
  href="/fonts/besley/besley.css">

body {
  font-family: 'Besley', sans-serif;
}

Keep the copyright and license notices with redistributed files.

Heading & Body

The family provides the heading; Inter carries the supporting text.

Besley Heading · Inter Body

Notes From The Reading Room

The reading room opens onto a quiet courtyard. Along the shelves, small handwritten labels mark the collections. A visitor leaves a book open beside the window, keeping a place for the next reader.