This week, Google’s design team announced the open-sourcing of Google Sans and Google Sans Flex, highlighting the evolution of its font designs. The creation of Product Sans in 2015 was a response to the redesign of the Google logo, allowing for updated branding on product lockups. This typeface featured geometric shapes aligned with the logo, though it struggled with lengthy text and smaller sizes.
Subsequently, Google Sans was introduced to meet the needs of marketing and product teams, optimizing aspects like character shapes and spacing for better readability. In 2020, Google Sans Text was launched to replace Roboto for smaller text, offering improved character design and space to enhance user experience.
Further expansions included support for over 20 non-Latin scripts, adding numerous new glyphs to cater to a global audience. In addition, Google Sans Mono was released in 2020 for editorial design, while Google Sans Code is set to debut in 2025, aimed at providing a better monospaced option for coding.