GT Canon

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Subfamilies
  • Standard S Light
    He looked out the window at the Hudson River, ruddied in the flame of the dying sun, and wondered moodily whether these last experiments would finally bring him the fame and success he was after, or if they were merely some more false alarms.
  • Standard M Light
    One of the great challenges in typography awaits both the typesetter and the type designer in the same place, and it concerns writers no less. It is not only the not-so-well-tempered poster that requires the right use of tension. It is especially the longer texts whose harmony and carrying power can be sustained only by maintaining tension.
  • Standard L Light
    Who is the user of a typeface? The graphic designer, typographer and reader? Or is it equally down to its designer? UX-driven objectives still play a major role in type design, which is being framed in terms of legibility, usability, screen optimisation, hinting, or responsive typography.
  • Standard S Light Italic
    Only that is limited can invite, can expand and intrude, or be intruded upon. No boundaries, nothing to transcend? At least nowhere to stay. Wandering does not leave any traces as long as it keeps up with the wandering of time.
  • Standard M Light Italic
    But I can inform myself. I can learn about the environment and people I create for. Their past and present. Their needs and desires. We are not what we design and it would be foolish to believe that we know our so called target group as well as we know our flatmates.
  • Standard L Light Italic
    Display denotes a style made for large sizes: headlines, titles, posters. Display styles often stress features: thinner hairlines, sharper serifs, higher contrast, narrower spacing. They prioritise impact over long, continuous readability.
  • Standard S Regular
    A face embodies character: the severity of a brutalist façade, the lightness of thin display cut, the friendliness of rounded terminals. The face is also about recognition: we know a style by its face, we choose an object because of the impression it projects.
  • Standard M Regular
    To lose face or to save face reveals the fragile, performative nature of this appearance. Therefore, naming a typeface is akin to attributing a paradoxical presence to letters, giving them an identity that is both personal and collective.
  • Standard L Regular
    Whether we view design as ‘creating with existing means’ or not, upon closer inspection, design has always been about constantly arranging things, and not just since the advent of computers. The ongoing alignment of shapes, images, letters with one another and within their surface.
  • Standard S Regular Italic
    Edges mark the threshold of meaning, the moment when sense meets its outside of the inside of the outside of the sentence. And therefore all is exterior.
  • Standard M Regular Italic
    How does a bold relate to its regular? How does balance persist across axes? Balance champions accuracy over precision. It is about what we see, not what we measure. And the eye likes balance, not boredom. Balance is invitation.
  • Standard L Regular Italic
    A weight here presupposes a counter there, even if that counter is nothing but the absence of its here with reversed signs. Balance does not eliminate difference; it activates it, arranges it, gives it place.
  • Standard S Medium
    A typeface, an interface, the face of a building—all these indicate how we can make things present: face is a principle, the visible form through which some becomes a thing. The face is the plane that mediates between structure and encounter.
  • Standard M Medium
    Only that is limited can invite, can expand and intrude, or be intruded upon. No boundaries, nothing to transcend? At least nowhere to stay. Wandering does not leave any traces as long as it keeps up with the wandering of time.
  • Standard L Medium
    Uncle Henry never laughed. He worked hard from morning till night and did not know what joy was. He was gray also, from his long beard to his rough boots, and he looked stern and solemn, and rarely spoke.
  • Standard S Medium Italic
    To lose face or to save face reveals the fragile, performative nature of this appearance. Therefore, naming a typeface is akin to attributing a paradoxical presence to letters, giving them an identity that is both personal and collective.
  • Standard M Medium Italic
    Since design means composing contrasts, creating tension can be a consequence. It’s not inevitable though. Contrast is no guarantee that tension will emerge. Quite the opposite. Tension is a rare commodity. Too much,and it dissipates. Often, the sweet spot lies in drawing the bow just far enough that it does not break.
  • Standard L Medium Italic
    Cutting into stone, writing swiftly by hand, pushing nodes on a graphical user interface: Motion is one of the driving forces in typography and a guiding principle between handwriting and type design.
  • Standard S Semibold
    In recent years, few terms in design have enjoyed such a meteoric rise as the two letters U and X. User experience quickly became the measure of all things. At first glance, there seems to be little wrong with that. Anyone who strives to offer users the best possible experience does not have to be a showman or a charlatan who turns even the simplest interaction into an experience.
  • Standard M Semibold
    In the one the principles are palpable, but removed from ordinary use; so that for want of habit it is difficult to turn one's mind in that direction: but if one turns it thither ever so little, one sees the principles fully, and one must have a quite inaccurate mind who reasons wrongly from principles so plain that it is almost impossible they should escape notice.
  • Standard L Semibold
    The reason, therefore, that some intuitive minds are not mathematical is that they cannot at all turn their attention to the principles of mathematics. But the reason that mathematicians are not intuitive is that they do not see what is before them, and that, accustomed to the exact and plain principles of mathematics, and not reasoning till they have well inspected and arranged their principles, they are lost in matters of intuition where the principles do not allow of such arrangement.
  • Standard S Semibold Italic
    The scene is laid in the house of Cephalus at the Piraeus; and the whole dialogue is narrated by Socrates the day after it actually took place to Timaeus, Hermocrates, Critias, and a nameless person, who are introduced in the Timaeus.
  • Standard M Semibold Italic
    Tension as a whole does not arise from the unrestrained or untamed wildness of individual elements. On the contrary, it is the right balance of unity and discipline on the one hand, and deviation on the other. In political and social contexts, the dissolution of tension is a noble and worthy pursuit. In design, it all too often leads to illegibility. This applies in both directions. After all, what is attraction, what is eroticism? The casual display of the fully revealed whole, or the play of gradually unveiling its parts? No tension, no relation.
  • Standard L Semibold Italic
    Mathematically this is correct; the computational model of points, curves, and transformations retains its internal precision at any size. Yet, in practice, vectors are always realised within systems that impose discrete constraints. Every display, printer, and imaging device ultimately renders to a raster.
  • Standard S Bold
    When quoting, words do not necessarily have to change, and yet most things do alter. Typeface, layout, screen, print technology, paper, context, means of distribution. Quoting always raises the question of origin and our relationship to it. What is it that we change when we quote?
  • Standard M Bold
    Scaling therefore entails rounding operations and antialiasing strategies that alter the appearance of shapes, particularly at small sizes where a single pixel represents a significant portion of form. Software environments introduce further divergence, using distinct coordinate systems, unit definitions, and conversion routines.
  • Standard L Bold
    Depends on a ruler who can be deceived, attacked, and overthrown. Higher power unfolds beyond that. Smart, gentle, even “positive” power operates through consent, self-optimisation, and internalisation, not through prohibition or force.
  • Standard S Bold Italic
    Whatever is scaled inevitably changes. The morphology of insects versus that of humans. The differing stability of small and large load-bearing structures in architecture. The behaviour of algorithms that perform well on small datasets yet falter when applied to billions of inputs.
  • Standard M Bold Italic
    Design is always an act of presumption. I do not design from the position that I am entitled to. I am not a chair. Horses have never painted humans on a wall. It is a common misconception that the means of design must reflect—or even find their equivalent in—the social and biographical conditions of their production.
  • Standard L Bold Italic
    And yet, justification can mean a speech act of rare agency, inhabited with a groundless sorrow over the circumstances that necessitate it. Things should have been the other way around. From the start.
  • Standard S Heavy
    When quoting, words do not necessarily have to change, and yet most things do alter. Typeface, layout, screen, print technology, paper, context, means of distribution. Quoting always raises the question of origin and our relationship to it. What is it that we change when we quote?
  • Standard M Heavy
    Broadly speaking, anatomy refers to the internal architecture of organisms, i.e. how bones, muscles, vessels, nerves and organs are arranged and how they relate to each other to form a functional whole.
  • Standard L Heavy
    Justification is a responsive act, regardless of whether what is to be justified lies in the past or in the future, as any justification presupposes something that has gone before. If that something points forwards, its intention is at least roughly outlined (by virtue of its potential to be realised).
  • Standard S Heavy Italic
    We meet in blurriness. If we understood each other completely, we would be identical and weightless, dissolving into pure oneness. Until that happens, however, recognising our differences and contrasts helps us to come closer together.
  • Standard M Heavy Italic
    Since design means composing contrasts, creating tension can be a consequence. It’s not inevitable though. Contrast is no guarantee that tension will emerge. Quite the opposite. Tension is a rare commodity. Too much,and it dissipates. Often, the sweet spot lies in drawing the bow just far enough that it does not break.
  • Standard L Heavy Italic
    To justify is to align. Be it aligning things or arguments, be it the alignment of an action and its actor with their surroundings and the forces that shape them. Who justifies, aims to shift the object of his or her justification, either in relation to its circumstances or to the object itself.
  • Standard S Black
    If one geometrises gravity—which is said to be at the heart of the relativisation of space and time—it is the most direct possible movement of these bodies around the sun. Like the apple that falls from Newton’s tree, gravity does not distract it from its actual ideal—to float strangely and ghostly in the air or on the tree?
  • Standard M Black
    But I can inform myself. I can learn about the environment and people I create for. Their past and present. Their needs and desires. We are not what we design and it would be foolish to believe that we know our so called target group as well as we know our flatmates.
  • Standard L Black
    It is one of the oldest branches of biological science, with its origins lying in early human attempts to understand the body by cutting it open, drawing it and naming its parts.
  • Standard S Black Italic
    There is something in the foot of the horse that has been a mystery to many who have been unable to find out the secrets by reading some of the books that have been printed on the different subjects, and experimenting on the same, pertaining to a perfect balance of the trotter and pacer when in action.
  • Standard M Black Italic
    Letterforms were constructed, architectural drawings relied on projection, mechanical parts were dimensioned with astonishing precision. But as these constructions were “analogue”, they remained continuous. Enter the node: Forms are now discrete, shapes are a list of coordinates and continuity is produced by computational smoothing.
  • Standard L Black Italic
    Display denotes a style made for large sizes: headlines, titles, posters. Display styles often stress features: thinner hairlines, sharper serifs, higher contrast, narrower spacing. They prioritise impact over long, continuous readability.
  • Settings
    Size
Typeface information

GT Canon’s design is pragmatic but not static: movement and liveliness are embedded in the letterforms. It is our answer to what our digital times require of a serif today. It’s what a contemporary serif should be in both form and function. Like its sans serif sibling, GT Standard, it aims for modern functionality rather than stylistic reinvention.

Download Specimen PDF

Latin-alphabet languages: Afaan, Afar, Afrikaans, Albanian, Alsatian, Amis, Anuta, Aragonese, Aranese, Aromanian, Arrernte, Asturian, Atayal, Aymara, Azerbaijani, Basque, Belarusian, Bemba, Bikol, Bislama, Bosnian, Breton, Cape Verdean Creole, Catalan, Cebuano, Chamorro, Chavacano, Chichewa, Chickasaw, Cimbrian, Cofán, Cornish, Corsican, Creek, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dawan, Dholuo, Drehu, Dutch, English, Estonian, Faroese, Fijian, Filipino, Finnish, French, Frisian, Friulian, Galician, Ganda, Genoese, German, Gikuyu, Gooniyandi, Greenlandic (Kalaallisut), Guadeloupean Creole, Gwich’in, Haitian Creole, Hawaiian, Hiligaynon, Hopi, Hungarian, Icelandic, Ido, Igbo, Ilocano, Indonesian, Irish, Istro-Romanian, Italian, Jamaican, Javanese, Jèrriais, Kaingang, Kala Lagaw Ya, Kapampangan, Kaqchikel, Kashubian, Kikongo, Kinyarwanda, Kiribati, Kirundi, Kurdish, Ladin, Latin, Latvian, Lithuanian, Lombard, Low Saxon, Luxembourgish, Maasai, Makhuwa, Malay, Maltese, Manx, Māori, Marquesan, Megleno-Romanian, Meriam Mir, Mirandese, Mohawk, Moldovan, Montagnais, Montenegrin, Murrinh-Patha, Nagamese Creole, Nahuatl, Ndebele, Neapolitan, Niuean, Noongar, Norwegian, Occitan, Old Icelandic, Old Norse, Oshiwambo, Palauan, Papiamento, Piedmontese, Polish, Portuguese, Q’eqchi’, Quechua, Rarotongan, Romanian,Romansh, Rotokas, Inari Sami, Lule Sami, Northern Sami, Southern Sami, Samoan, Sango, Saramaccan, Sardinian, Scottish Gaelic, Seri, Seychellois Creole, Shawnee, Shona, Sicilian, Silesian, Slovak, Slovenian, Somali, Upper and Lower Sorbian, Northern and Southern Sotho, Spanish, Sranan, Sundanese, Swahili, Swazi, Swedish, Tagalog, Tahitian, Tetum, Tok Pisin, Tokelauan, Tongan, Tshiluba, Tsonga, Tswana, Tumbuka, Turkish, Tuvaluan, Tzotzil, Venetian, Vepsian, Võro, Wallisian, Walloon, Waray-Waray, Warlpiri, Wayuu, Welsh, Wik-Mungkan, Wolof, Xavante, Xhosa, Yapese, Yindjibarndi, Zapotec, Zarma, Zazaki, Zulu, Zuni

Typeface features

OpenType features enable smart typography. You can use these features in most Desktop applications, on the web, and in your mobile apps. Each typeface contains different features. Below are the most important features included in GT Canon’s fonts:

  • TNUM
  • Tabular figures
0123456789
  • ONUM
  • Oldstyle figures
0123456789
  • SMCP
  • Small Caps
Anatomy
Typeface Minisite
  • Visit the GT Canon minisite to discover more about the typeface family’s history and design concept.