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»Inknut Antiqua« is an Antiqua typeface for literature and long-form text for languages using the Latin or Devanagari scripts. Approaching the idea of web-publishing as a modern day private press, it is designed to evoke Venetian incunabula and humanist manuscripts, but with the quirks and idiosyncrasies of the kinds of typefaces you find in this artisanal tradition. It comes with a complement of typographical sorts and OpenType features for the purpose. The proportions of Inknut Antiqua make it well suited for low-resolution screens.

The Inknut (Terminalia Chebula), called »harad« in Hindi, is a nut-like fruit that can be used for ink making and is purported to cure blindness. The tree it grows from is native to the Indian sub-continent and south-east Asia.

Shelley Gruendler was so kind as to review Inknut Antiqua for Typographica.org, as part of the ‘Our Favorite Typefaces of 2014’ series. Shelley writes “Inknut demonstrates what can happen when a person with an excellent eye for both historical and present-day type design attempts something new — and succeeds.”


Inknut Antiqua supports the Adobe Latin-3 character-set, and Devanagari. It is an OpenSource typeface published under the SIL Open Font License Version 1.1, and funded by Google Webfonts. You can download the source-files and font-files here. A web-specimen is available here. This project is available on the Google Fonts service.

Inknut Antiqua supports the following languages using the Latin script: Afrikaans, Albanian, Asu, Basque, Bemba, Bena, Bosnian, Catalan, Chiga, Congo Swahili, Cornish, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, Estonian, Faroese, Filipino, Finnish, French, Galician, Ganda, German, Gusii, Hungarian, Icelandic, Indonesian, Irish, Italian, Jola-Fonyi, Kabuverdianu, Kalenjin, Kinyarwanda, Latvian, Lithuanian, Luo, Luyia, Machame, Makhuwa-Meetto, Makonde, Malagasy, Malay, Maltese, Manx, Morisyen, North Ndebele, Norwegian Bokmål, Norwegian Nynorsk, Nyankole, Oromo, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Romansh, Rombo, Rundi, Rwa, Samburu, Sango, Sangu, Sena, Shambala, Shona, Slovak, Slovenian, Soga, Somali, Spanish, Swahili, Swedish, Swiss German, Taita, Teso, Turkmen, Vunjo, Welsh, and Zulu.

Inknut Antiqua supports the following languages using the Devanagari script: Awadhi, Bagheli, Bhatneri, Bhili, Bihari, Braj Bhasha, Chhattisgarhi, Garhwali, Gondi (Betul, Chhindwara, and Mandla dialects), Harauti, Ho, Jaipuri, Kachchhi, Kanauji, Kului, Kumaoni, Kurku, Kurukh, Marwari, Mundari, Newari, Palpa, Santali, Bodo, Dogri, Goan Konkani, Hindi, Kashmiri, Maharashtrian Konkani, Maithili, Marathi, Nepali, Sanskrit, Santhali, and Sindhi.