Fraunces is a display, "Old Style" soft serif typeface inspired by the mannerisms of early 20th century typefaces such as Windsor, Souvenir, and the Cooper Series.
Fraunces is a variable font with four axes: Weight (wght), Optical Size (opsz), Softness (SOFT), and Wonk (WONK). The Softness axis controls the “wetness” or “inkiness” of the typeface. The Optical Size axis uses similar changes in contrast, but factors in additional changes depending on the size of the font. At smaller sizes, the letterspacing opens up, x-height increases, and contrast decreases to allow for easier reading. Additionally, at smaller sizes, substitutions for the “wonky” characters are made automatically. The Wonk axis controls the manual substitution of “wonky” characters, such as the lean of the h, n, and m glyphs in the Roman, and the flagged ball terminals of the b, d, h, k, l, v, and w glyphs of the Italic. The Weight axis spans a wide range between Thin and Black.
Between these four axes, and the Roman and Italic styles, there are over 100 pre-defined instances. Although Fraunces was primarily intended as a display typeface, its smaller optical sizes work very well for text.
Fraunces was designed by Phaedra Charles and Flavia Zimbardi.
