Dear Amigos,
Ever notice how the same three or four typefaces keep sneaking back into your feed? Rounded, chunky, but still a serif font. That’s what we call a soft serif, and right now they’re everywhere. We’re talking about a style that had its golden moment in mid-century advertising, went quiet for a long stretch, and is now back on every moodboard we open. Brands reach for soft serifs today because they do something clean sans serifs normally can’t: they feel warm, approachable and human.
So let’s talk about where this style actually comes from, who made it famous, and a handful of open-source soft serifs from our own collection that you can download today.
What Are Soft Serifs?
A soft serif is exactly what it sounds like: a serif typeface where the serifs (and often the whole letterform) have been rounded off. No sharp, instead you get rounded terminals and a general sense that the letters were drawn by hand rather than ruled with a compass.
The style has its roots in early 20th-century American lettering and advertising. Back then, sign painters and lettering artists were working fast, often by brush, and that brush-drawn quality (soft, fluid, a little imperfect) started showing up in the type foundries’ catalogs. Some soft serifs lean into Art Nouveau curves, borrowing from nature’s organic lines.
Soft serifs were built to be seen in catchy and short phrases. They’re display types, made for posters, packaging, and advertising, where personality matters more than neutrality.
The Founders: Classic Soft Serifs That Remain a Reference
Every soft serif you see today, on a kombucha label or a boutique hotel sign, owes something to these three.
Cooper Black
You know Cooper Black even if you don’t know you know it. It’s the typeface on the EasyJet logo, on Tootsie Roll wrappers, on the cover of the Beach Boys’ Pet Sounds. Designed by Oswald Bruce Cooper and released by the Barnhart Brothers & Spindler foundry in Chicago in 1922, Cooper Black was drawn as an extra-bold weight of Cooper’s earlier typeface, Cooper Old Style. Cooper himself was a Chicago lettering artist, and it shows: the design channels his own brush-lettering style, carrying that hand-drawn warmth into mechanical type.
A hundred years later, it still looks new. Today it’s most widely used through Cooper BT, Bitstream’s digital revival of the family, which is how most of us actually encounter it on a computer.
ITC Souvenir
If Cooper Black is the loud extrovert of soft serifs, ITC Souvenir is its laid-back cousin. ITC Souvenir is an expansion of Souvenir Graphic, Ed Benguiat’s revival of an earlier Souvenir face originally designed by Morris F. Benton for ATF back in 1920. Souvenir became one of the faces of the 1970s in album covers and disco-era packaging.
There’s a nice piece of type-history trivia here: ITC Souvenir was the very first typeface ITC ever released, launching the foundry alongside ITC Avant Garde Gothic. Two typefaces with completely different personalities. Souvenir’s low contrast curves and gentle serifs made it flexible, comfortable both on a Pac-Man arcade flyer as it was on a cookbook cover.
Windsor
Windsor is actually older than Cooper Black, even though it reads as its stylistic descendant. It was released in 1905, designed by Eleisha Pechey and put out through the Stephenson Blake foundry — nearly two decades before Cooper Black existed.
Windsor’s DNA is pure Art Nouveau. You can see it in the egg-shaped bowl of the R, the beak-like serifs on the S, and the unfurling tail of the Q, organic shapes translated into metal type. Pechey spent decades as the London agent for the Sheffield-based Stephenson Blake foundry before the firm released his design, giving Windsor more angular serifs and an eccentric charm. It’s the typeface behind the credits of nearly every Woody Allen film since the 1970s, which tells you something about the theatrical mood it carries.
Open-Source Alternatives You Can Download From Our Collection
Loving Cooper Black from a distance is one thing. Actually licensing it for a client project is another. The good news: the soft serif revival has produced a wave of excellent open-source alternatives. Here are five from our own font library.
Fraunces
Fraunces is a display “Old Style” soft serif that draws directly from Windsor, Souvenir, and the Cooper family we just walked through, you’ll recognize the DNA. Designed by Phaedra Charles and Flavia Zimbardi of Undercase Type, it comes with an enormous range of optical sizes and a wonky variable axis that lets you dial the personality up or down. If you only download one font from this list, make it this one.
Playfair
Playfair takes the soft serif idea in a more elegant direction. Designed by Claus Eggers Sørensen and inspired by 18th-century printers like Baskerville, it’s the pick when your brief calls for sophistication over playfulness, while remaining soft.
Calistoga
Calistoga takes from more regional and nostalgic vibes: vintage Santa Fe Railroad signage, by way of lettering artist Oscar M. Bryn. Designed by Yvonne Dlugosch and Eben Sorkin of Sorkin Type, it’s cheerful, compact, and space-saving — great for headlines that need to punch above their weight without eating up your layout.
Young Serif
Young Serif goes heavier and more traditional, pulling from Plantin Infant and ITC Italian Old Style rather than the Cooper lineage directly. Designed by Bastien Sozeau for Noir Blanc Rouge, it’s a robust, substantial serif that still keeps that soft, rounded warmth — a good option when you want gravity without losing approachability.
Bonbance
Bonbance is the quiet sophisticate of the group. Designed by Louna Bourdon for the Jacoby & Fils printing house (via X Cicéro), its letterforms nod to the turn of the 20th century while balancing softness with real precision. It’s proof that “soft serif” doesn’t have to mean “casual” — this one dresses up nicely.
Go Explore the Rest
Soft serifs are just one corner of what’s sitting in our free font hub, and honestly, we’re a little biased about the whole collection. Go download a few and see what sticks. That’s what we’re here for.
Yours truly,
A Type of Ari.
Since you are really into design and creativity, you might be interested in these other articles and resources:
Insider Tips: The Best Type Foundries with Open Source Fonts
Here are the Best Free Font Websites Curating Open Source Fonts
