Spectral

Screen-first serif commissioned by Google for Docs/Slides; sturdy for reading.

Font settings

Weight

These settings in CSS

.spectral {
  font-family: "Spectral", serif;
}

Waterfall

The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog

Character set

ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ

abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz

0123456789

!@#$%&*()[]{}<>,.;:'"?/—–-+=

Paragraph

Typography is the craft of endowing human language with a durable visual form. It shapes how words are read, felt and remembered — from wayfinding on a station platform to the small print of a contract. Good type disappears into reading; great type gives a voice to the text.

Install

Google Fonts

Embed in the <head> of your HTML

<link rel="preconnect" href="https://fonts.googleapis.com">
<link rel="preconnect" href="https://fonts.gstatic.com" crossorigin>
<link href="https://fonts.googleapis.com/css2?family=Spectral:wght@200;300;400;500;600;700;800&display=swap" rel="stylesheet">

Use Spectral in CSS

/* <weight>: one of 200, 300, 400, 500, 600, 700, 800 */

.spectral {
  font-family: "Spectral", serif;
  font-weight: <weight>;
}

Fontsource

Install from npm

npm install @fontsource/spectral

Import once in your app entry

// Loads weight 400 — other weights: "@fontsource/spectral/<weight>.css"
import "@fontsource/spectral";

Use in CSS

body {
  font-family: "Spectral", serif;
}

Self-host

Google Fonts and Fontsource serve stripped builds — most OpenType features are removed. Self-hosting the original files is the only way to get the full feature set.

Download the font files from the website and serve them yourself:

Declare with @font-face

@font-face {
  font-family: "Spectral";
  src: url("/fonts/spectral.woff2") format("woff2");
  font-display: swap;
}

Details

Designer: Production Type (dir. Jean-Baptiste Levée)
Foundry: Production Type
Licence: OFL
Format: Static