Mada
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-variable/mada 2. Import in App
import '@fontsource-variable/mada/wght.css'; 3. CSS Usage
body {
font-family: "Mada Variable", 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
/* mada-latin-wght-normal */
@font-face {
font-family: "Mada Variable";
font-style: normal;
font-display: swap;
font-weight: 100 900;
src: url(https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/fontsource/fonts/mada:vf@latest/latin-wght-normal.woff2)
format("woff2-variations");
} Background & Story
Mada is a modernist, unmodulted Arabic typeface inspired by road signage seen around Cairo, Egypt, by Khaled Hosny. The Arabic component is characterized by low descenders, open contours, and low contrast forms, making it suitable for signage, small point sizes, and user interfaces. However Mada can work also as a display typeface, with a modernist and simplistic feeling. The Latin component is a slightly modified version of Source Sans Pro, led by Paul Hunt at Adobe Type.
To contribute, see github.com/aliftype/mada
Tags & Moods
Subsets
Install
pnpm add @fontsource-variable/mada Designed by
Khaled Hosny, Paul D. Hunt
Links
License
OFL-1.1