Dorsa
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.
Uppercase
Lowercase
Numerals
Symbols
Package Manager
The recommended way to use fonts in modern web projects.
1. Install Package
pnpm add @fontsource/dorsa2. Import in App
// Please select at least one weight and style3. CSS Usage
body {
font-family: "Dorsa", sans-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
/* Please select at least one weight and style */Background & Story
I always been attracted to condensed typefaces, and one of the first I came across was Empire, designed by Morris Benton Fuller for ATF in 1937. I first spotted it in an architecture book at my college's library while doing homework.
Dorsa is a modern interpretation of Empire with some personal details. When I start sketching I knew it would be a little less condensed than the original Empire because I wanted it to be used for use in titles, and combined with positive letter spacing it gives an elegant look to text. Although the original hasn't got a lowercase, I studied a lot of skyline typefaces and drew a fully original lowercase.
I started with lowercase “o”, which isn't completely geometric, it is expanded to the outside, keeping the same whitespace through all weights. And this repeats all over the typeface, because the construction of all the characters was modular, based on that “o”; the “f” is designed to not meet any of the diacritics; and uppercase “A” has a traditional form, because I think this is more legible.
Tags & Moods
Subsets
Install
pnpm add @fontsource/dorsaDesigned by
Santiago Orozco
Links
License
OFL-1.1