Hanken Grotesk

Technical Typeface Specification

A Neo-Grotesque sans-serif typeface engineered for digital and print applications.

Download Latest Release · View Documentation · Report Issue

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1. Typeface Overview

Hanken Grotesk is a sans serif typeface inspired by the classic grotesques. Geometry, metrics, punctuations and OpenType features have been updated to support a wide range of projects such as environmental signage, textface for books and magazines, Interface, Websites and Mobile Applications.

The Hanken Grotesk project is led by Alfredo Marco Pradil.

To contribute, see github.com/marcologous/hanken-grotesk

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2. Font Family

Style	Weight	Width	Optical Sizing
Light	300	Normal	Yes
Regular	400	Normal	Yes
Medium	500	Normal	Yes
SemiBold	600	Normal	Yes
Bold	700	Normal	Yes
Black	900	Normal	Yes

Variable Font

fonts/variable/HankenGrotesk-VF.ttf

The variable font implements weight axis (wght) for granular weight control between 300–900.

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3. Technical Specifications

Supported Formats

• OpenType (OTF) — fonts/otf/
• TrueType (TTF) — fonts/ttf/
• Variable (TTF/VF) — fonts/variable/
• Web Open Font Format 2 (WOFF2) — fonts/web/

Character Set

• Latin Basic — U+0020–U+007F
• Latin Extended-A — U+0100–U+017F
• Latin Extended-B — U+0180–U+024F
• Greek and Coptic — U+0370–U+03FF
• Cyrillic — U+0400–U+04FF (pending — see #2)
• Currency Symbols — U+20A0–U+20CF
• Mathematical Operators — U+2200–U+22FF

OpenType Features

Feature	Tag	Description
Small Caps	smcp	Lowercase as small capitals
Case-Sensitive Forms	case	Adjusts punctuation for capitals
Tabular Figures	tnum	Monospaced numerals
Lining Figures	lnum	Uppercase-height numerals
Oldstyle Figures	onum	Text-height numerals
Fractions	frac	Diagonal fractions
Ordinals	ordn	Ordinal forms (1st, 2nd, 3rd)
Superscript	sups	Superscript characters
Subscript	subs	Subscript characters
slashed-zero	zero	Slashed zero variant
kern	kern	Kerning pairs

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4. Build Pipeline

Prerequisites

• Python 3.8+
• fontmake
• gftools
• fonttools

Installation

python3 -m venv venv
source venv/bin/activate
pip install -r requirements.txt

Build Commands

# Build static fonts
cd sources
gftools builder config.yml

# Build variable font
gftools builder config.yml --variable

CI/CD

Automated builds run on every push to master. View workflow logs:

.github/workflows/build.yml

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5. Project Structure

hanken-grotesk/
├── .github/
│   └── workflows/
│       └── build.yml
├── documentation/
│   └── SPECimen.md
├── fonts/
│   ├── otf/              # OpenType static
│   ├── ttf/              # TrueType static
│   ├── variable/        # Variable font
│   └── web/             # WOFF2 web fonts
├── images/
├── sources/              # Glyphs source files
├── AUTHORS.txt
├── CONTRIBUTORS.txt
├── OFL.txt
├── README.md
└── requirements.txt

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6. Contributing

Contributions are welcome. Please review the contribution guidelines before submitting enhancements or bug fixes.

Reporting Issues

For technical issues (missing glyphs, rendering bugs, build failures), please open an issue.

Font Testing

Test files are available in fonts/. For web testing, use the WOFF2 files in fonts/web/.

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7. License

Hanken Grotesk is distributed under the SIL Open Font License 1.1.

See OFL.txt for full license text.

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8. Version History

Version	Date	Changes
2.001	2024-01	Initial release with 6 weights, variable font support
1.x	2023	Development phase

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