Brygada 1918
Type with Purpose
Good typography guides attention, improves understanding, and makes communication effortless.
The Anatomy of a Typeface
By FontSide · June 2026
Every typeface is a system of decisions — about stroke contrast, x-height, spacing, and rhythm. The best ones feel invisible: you stop seeing the letters and start hearing the voice behind them. That transparency is the hardest thing to design.
A high x-height opens up the counters and makes small text breathe. Tight tracking pulls a headline together; loose tracking gives a caption room to exhale. None of these choices are accidents — they are arguments about how reading should feel.
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Package Manager
The recommended way to use fonts in modern web projects.
1. Install Package
pnpm add @fontsource-variable/brygada-19182. Import in App
import '@fontsource-variable/brygada-1918/wght.css';3. CSS Usage
body {
font-family: "Brygada 1918 Variable", serif;
}Google Fonts CDN
Use Google's CDN to embed the fonts directly via HTML.
HTML <head>
<!-- Please select at least one weight and style -->Fontsource CDN
Skip the build step by adding this directly to your global CSS file.
Global CSS
/* brygada-1918-latin-wght-normal */
@font-face {
font-family: "Brygada 1918 Variable";
font-style: normal;
font-display: swap;
font-weight: 100 900;
src: url(https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/fontsource/fonts/brygada-1918:vf@latest/latin-wght-normal.woff2)
format("woff2-variations");
}Background & Story
Brygada 1918 is a revival project created for the celebration of the 100 years of independance of the Republic of Poland in 2018, with the support of the "Independent" program and the President of the Republic of Poland. The typeface is based on the catalogue entry of the National Type Foundry from 1954, and a set of matrices found at the Book Arts Museum by Janusz Tryzno in 2016. More information is available on the project's website and Google Design.
To contribute, see github.com/kosmynkab/Brygada-1918.
Reviving a forgotten font: Type detectives give life to Brygada
Mysterious Polish font matrices spark interest in a lost and forgotten pre-World War II typeface
A man uncovers an unused font in dusty piles of metal plates and blocks. He is intrigued by the mysterious letters “K” and “R” with curly legs, and a handwritten note on old brown paper that says “Brygada.” He starts an archeological quest to research the origins of the font–and inspires a team to revive the font with 21st century software and a microscopic camera.
Is this the plot line for a new “Indiana Jones” movie or the origin story for a remade digitized font?
It’s the latter. It’s the story of Brygada, a lost and forgotten 20th century typeface remade for the 21st century.
It was the summer of 2015 and Mr. Janusz Tryzno was the owner of the Book Art Museum of Łódź located in a 19th century villa in Łódź (pronounced “Woodge”), Poland. He dug through piles of font matrices (metal blocks with letter shapes used to cast letters) and metal plates wrapped in brown paper from the Polish National Type Foundry. After uncovering the Brygada matrices, he asked museum volunteers, Przemysław Hoffer and Borys Kosmynka, to examine the matrices to see if they could bring the font back to life.
To learn more about Brygada, visit: Reviving a forgotten font: Type detectives give life to Brygada(English), Rewitalizacja zapomnianej czcionki: nowe życie Brygady(Polish).
Tags & Moods
Subsets
Install
pnpm add @fontsource-variable/brygada-1918Designed by
Capitalics, Mateusz Machalski, Borys Kosmynka, Ania Wieluńska, Przemysław Hoffer
Links
License
OFL-1.1