Savate
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/savate2. Import in App
import '@fontsource-variable/savate/wght.css';3. CSS Usage
body {
font-family: "Savate 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
/* savate-latin-wght-normal */
@font-face {
font-family: "Savate Variable";
font-style: normal;
font-display: swap;
font-weight: 100 900;
src: url(https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/fontsource/fonts/savate:vf@latest/latin-wght-normal.woff2)
format("woff2-variations");
}Background & Story
Savate is a humanist sans-serif typeface with reverse contrast. Its name, borrowed from the French martial art, reflects the typeface’s sense of motion. Its open, generous curves and assertive forms evoke wide gestures and dynamic rhythm. Designed with both flexibility and impact in mind, Savate comes in a full range of weights from Extralight to Black, with matching italics, making it well-suited for everything from bold headlines to confident, readable text.
To contribute, see github.com/maxesnee/savate.
This new release is a complete redraw of the original Savate, first published in 2016 by the We.ch collective (Max Esnée and Hadrien Bulliat) through Velvetyne. While it stays true to the spirit of the original design, every glyph has been refined to improve rhythm, structure, and overall cohesion. The family has also been significantly expanded, now offering a full palette of styles and expanded language support, including Latin Pan-African, making Savate a versatile tool for a broad range of typographic needs.
Tags & Moods
Subsets
Install
pnpm add @fontsource-variable/savateDesigned by
Plomb Type, Max Esnée
Links
License
OFL-1.1