Typeface · Other
Charcoal
Charcoal is a sans-serif typeface designed by David Berlow of Font Bureau during the period 1994–1997.
About Charcoal
Charcoal is a sans-serif typeface designed by David Berlow of Font Bureau during the period 1994–1997. Charcoal was the default menu font in Apple Computer's Mac OS 8 and 9, replacing the comparatively harder-to-read Chicago as part of the new Platinum interface. In Mac OS X developer preview 3, it was replaced with Lucida Grande as the system typeface. Charcoal is designed for high legibility, even at smaller point sizes, displayed on computer monitors. While similar in design to grotesque sans-serifs, Charcoal has a distinctive organic quality. The letterforms have a high x-height, a vertical axis, and maintain generous counter-form in and around the letterforms. Descending characters, g, j, p, q, and y are shallow, compensating for the high x-height, and allowing for reduced leading in text.
From the Wikipedia article “Charcoal (typeface)”, licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Using Charcoal in a book
Test this typeface at both text and display sizes before committing; print a sample page at final size.
Commercial typefaces require a licence that covers embedding in PDFs and ebooks; check the foundry's licence before you publish.
Sources & data
- Structured data from Wikidata Q2340303 (CC0).
- Summary text from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0).