Merriweather Sans
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
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Package Manager
The recommended way to use fonts in modern web projects.
1. Install Package
pnpm add @fontsource-variable/merriweather-sans2. Import in App
import '@fontsource-variable/merriweather-sans/wght.css';3. CSS Usage
body {
font-family: "Merriweather Sans 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
/* merriweather-sans-latin-wght-normal */
@font-face {
font-family: "Merriweather Sans Variable";
font-style: normal;
font-display: swap;
font-weight: 100 900;
src: url(https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/fontsource/fonts/merriweather-sans:vf@latest/latin-wght-normal.woff2)
format("woff2-variations");
}Background & Story
Merriweather Sans is a low-contrast semi-condensed sans-serif text typeface family designed to be pleasant to read at very small sizes. Merriweather Sans is traditional in feeling despite the modern shapes it has adopted for screens.
Merriweather Sans is an evolving project and will be updated. As of now there are 8 styles: Light, Regular, Bold, and ExtraBold weights in Roman and Italic styles.
There is also Merriweather, a serif version which closely harmonizes with the weights and styles of this sans-serif family.
Designed by Eben Sorkin, Merriweather Sans features a large x height, slightly condensed letterforms, a mild diagonal stress and open forms.
Merriweather Sans is a work in progress and will be improved regularly. This means you can request improvements and even fund specific features if if they are outside of the current scope of work. For more information and to stay updated see Eben Sorkin's blog and Flickr stream, and the MerriweatherFnt Twitter microblog.
Updated in June 2013 with italic styles.
Updated in January 2016: This revision improves on-screen rendering especially at text sizes with ttfautohint hinting. Merriweather Sans will work better when installed on desktops. Some OpenType features were added and improved. Since the vertical and horizontal metrics changed, this may cause some text to reflow in some browsers. A second update (v1.006) was made on 1/25 to fix ligatures and other digraphs.
To contribute, see github.com/SorkinType/Merriweather-Sans.
Tags & Moods
Subsets
Install
pnpm add @fontsource-variable/merriweather-sansDesigned by
Sorkin Type
Links
License
OFL-1.1