Category Archives: 12 Styles

View the web font spec­i­men sheet.

A human­ist sans serif font by psType.

Ratio has some quirky ele­ments, such as the rela­tion­ship between the dots and the strokes on the let­ters i and j. But the quirks don’t under­mine the over­all tex­ture, rhythm, or read­abil­ity of the font. This makes it stand out from oth­ers that try and fail to incor­po­rate unique ele­ments into a text font.

PsType says that Ratio shows “the best of both human­ist and geo­met­ric sans ser­ifs.” I cat­e­go­rize it as a human­ist sans because it has gen­er­ous aper­tures, a double-decker g, bowls with implied stress (on the b, d, q, p), and a lovely, human­ist italic.

Ratio’s x-height is smaller than Ver­dana, and needs to be set a bit larger to retain read­abil­ity. At the same time, the bowl is almost cir­cu­lar, mak­ing the font feel wider. Thus, I wouldn’t rec­om­mend Ratio for use in a nar­row col­umn. The bold weight is a bit heavy for my taste (the closed coun­ter­forms on the a and e start to “fill in” at text sizes). But the semi-bold is heavy enough to cre­ate a good con­trast to the reg­u­lar weight. I’ve used reg­u­lar and semi-bold in the spec­i­men sheet.

Ratio comes in 12 styles. I’ve tested the usual 4 plus the semi-bold, and they hold up beau­ti­fully cross browser. The whole fam­ily is avail­able on Type­kit.