About
Katagami is a free type family with five members: Sans, Round, Text, Serif and Mono. It started in October 2026 and is released under the SIL Open Font License.
“One family that feels like a coherent system.”
Why I made it
I started Katagami to be one family that works as a system. It has a sans, a rounded sans, a text face, a serif and a mono on one skeleton, and I made the text face the most readable of them.
I took inspiration from Inter, Geist, Berkeley Mono and Camber, and I wanted a modern family that breaks from the traditions of monospace type.
The name
The family was first called Kerf. A kerf is the width of material that a saw or a laser removes. The logo comes from that name. It is a square cut three times, and the piece that is left reads as a K.
I renamed it Katagami because I liked the Japanese word 型 (kata), which means a form or a pattern.
Pattern paper
Katagami are paper stencils for dyeing cloth, and the word 型紙 means pattern paper. Cutters in the Shiroko and Jike districts of Suzuka in Mie Prefecture have made them for more than five hundred years.
- Sheets of washi are bonded with kakishibu, a fermented persimmon tannin.
- A cutter carves the pattern through the layers, and a silk net holds the loose pieces.
- Rice paste goes through the holes onto the cloth, and the cloth is dyed.
- The paste washes out and leaves the pattern white.
Type a word below to cut it, then dye the cloth.
The members
Katagami Sans
Katagami Sans keeps Inter's spacing and features and adds squared bowls, level cuts and square punctuation. Its weights run from Thin to Black and are heavier than Inter's from SemiBold up.
Katagami Round
Katagami Round squares its bowls a little less than Sans and rounds every outer corner at 0.22 stems. It keeps Inter's proportions and spacing, and its weights run from Thin to Black.
Katagami Text
Katagami Text is the member for reading. Its x-height is 0.71 of the cap height, its spacing is tighter, its round letters are wider and it is set 4 percent smaller. Its weights run from Thin to Black.
Katagami Serif
Katagami Serif is Katagami Text with rectangular serifs that follow Signifier's design notes, triangular lowercase heads and slightly thinner horizontals. Its weights run from Thin to Black.
Katagami Mono
Katagami Mono fits Katagami Sans to a 0.625 em cell. Every character that could be mistaken for another has its own shape, and code ligatures stay off until you turn on dlig. Its weights run from Thin to Bold.
Timeline
The dates come from the repository history.
Kerf 0.1 shipped with a sans and a mono generated from Inter, the specimen site and the WebGPU glyph wall.
Kerf Round added geometric bowls and rounded corners, and Kerf Text and the converter followed.
The family gained 19 more scripts, the CJK companions, small capitals and the Mono's features, and the map of where it writes went live.
The family was renamed Katagami and gained a Traditional Chinese companion.
Katagami Text got closer c terminals, a higher g tail, a narrower fit and a straight l.
Katagami Serif arrived, the f crossbar became the same at every weight, and the glyphs, features, FAQ and download pages went live.
Katagami Serif took rectangular serifs after Signifier's design notes, and Katagami Mono gained the Braille patterns and status symbols that coding agents print.
Credits
- Inter
- Rasmus Andersson designed it, and it is released under the SIL Open Font License 1.1. Every member starts from its outlines, spacing and OpenType features.
- Noto Sans
- The Noto project releases it under the SIL Open Font License 1.1. It supplies the 19 merged scripts and the four CJK companions.
- Camber
- Eduardo Manso designed it at Emtype Foundry. It was measured for the squared curves of Katagami Sans.
- Berkeley Mono
- U.S. Graphics made it. It was measured for the cell and the arms of Katagami Mono.
- PP Mori
- Pangram Pangram made it. It was measured for the proportions of Katagami Text.
- NewsSerif
- Henning Skibbe designed it at Character Type. It was measured for the first Katagami Serif.
- Signifier
- Kris Sowersby designed it at Klim Type Foundry. Its design notes set the shape of Katagami Serif's serifs.
- Geist
- Vercel made it. It inspired the idea of the family as one system.
Camber, Berkeley Mono, PP Mori and NewsSerif were measured as references only, and Signifier's published notes guided the serifs. Katagami contains no outlines from them.
Curves
The handle fraction f is how far a curve's handles reach toward the corner of its box. A circle reaches 0.552 and Inter about 0.60.
- Sans
- 0.73
- Bowls are squared toward their corners, and round letters are condensed so o matches n.
- Round
- 0.69
- Bowls are squared two thirds as far, and every sharp corner is rounded at 0.22 stems.
- Text
- 0.59
- Curves stay close to Inter's, with a lower x-height and wider round letters.
Status
Version 0.1 is generated. Every glyph is a transform of Inter's outlines, and no glyph has been corrected by hand yet. These changes come next.
- Hand corrections give the t a flat top, the Q a straight tail and the 2 a squarer shape.
- Every member gets an italic.
- The fonts get hinting and pass fontbakery checks.
- Katagami Mono gets Greek and Cyrillic.