Martel
Designed By
Dan Reynolds
7 Styles Serif
The pleasure
of a well-set
page.
Martel · Regular
Compare this serif family in headings and a continuous reading sample.
7 styles available. Compare the specimens below, or enter your own text.
Download Martel ↓TTF · SIL Open Font License 1.1
Set Your Own Text
Change the style and size to compare the letterforms.
Monsoon letters from Pune
A Page In Martel
Martel · 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.
7 Styles,
One Family
Every available style is shown below in its own font file.
Extra Light200
Monsoon letters from Pune
Light300
Monsoon letters from Pune
Regular400
Monsoon letters from Pune
Semi Bold600
Monsoon letters from Pune
Bold700
Monsoon letters from Pune
Extra Bold800
Monsoon letters from Pune
Black900
Monsoon letters from Pune
Martel started in 2008, in the Department of Typography & Graphic Communication at the University of Reading, and it took until 2014 before the first 7 weights went public. Dan Reynolds, now a type designer in Berlin, drew every Devanagari glyph in it himself.
What did he want it for? Immersive reading, in his words: long passages of Hindi, Marathi, Nepali or Sanskrit, text you sit with for an hour. So the Devanagari has strong contrast between thick and thin, and the axis of that contrast runs on a diagonal, following the pen angle most often used for the script. The proportions come from traditional writing and calligraphy too. I would expect a page of it to stay calm over a long sitting, the pen logic doing quiet work underneath.
The Latin was not drawn from scratch. It is based on Merriweather, so English set beside the Hindi will look familiar to anyone who knows that family.
Weights run Extra Light 200, Light 300, Regular 400, then Semi Bold 600 through Black 900, with no Medium. For the matching sans, look up Martel Sans.
Characters & Figures
472 glyphs reported in the reference style. This selection shows 400 recorded characters.
ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ
abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz
0123456789 & @ ? !
View The Recorded Character Selection
The Font Files
Download
Martel
7 TTF styles with the accompanying CSS, README and license information.
Download ZIP · 601 KB ↓- Version
- 1.001
- License
- SIL Open Font License 1.1
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/martel/martel.css">
body {
font-family: 'Martel', sans-serif;
}Keep the copyright and license notices with redistributed files.
Heading & Body
The family provides the heading; Inter carries the supporting text.
Martel 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.