Yanone Kaffeesatz
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/yanone-kaffeesatz2. Import in App
import '@fontsource-variable/yanone-kaffeesatz/wght.css';3. CSS Usage
body {
font-family: "Yanone Kaffeesatz 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
/* yanone-kaffeesatz-latin-wght-normal */
@font-face {
font-family: "Yanone Kaffeesatz Variable";
font-style: normal;
font-display: swap;
font-weight: 100 900;
src: url(https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/fontsource/fonts/yanone-kaffeesatz:vf@latest/latin-wght-normal.woff2)
format("woff2-variations");
}Background & Story
"Yanone Kaffeesatz" was first published in 2004 and is Yanone’s first ever finished typeface. Its Bold is reminiscent of 1920s coffee house typography, while the rather thin fonts bridge the gap to present times. Lacking self confidence and knowledge about the type scene, Yanone decided to publish the family for free under a Creative Commons License. A decision that should turn out one of the best he ever made. It has been downloaded over 100,000 times to date, and you can witness Kaffeesatz use on German fresh-water gyms, Dubai mall promos and New Zealand McDonalds ads. And of course on coffee and foodstuff packaging and café design around the globe.
In 2009 he reworked much of the typeface and it got published in FontShop’s FontFont Library under the new name FF Kava. You can read more about it in an extensive article by Yves Peters on FontFeed.
Updated in December 2013 with Cyrillic, designed by Sol Matas and Juan Pablo del Peral at HT Fonts.
To contribute, see github.com/yanone/kaffeesatz.
Tags & Moods
Subsets
Install
pnpm add @fontsource-variable/yanone-kaffeesatzDesigned by
Yanone, Cyreal
Links
License
OFL-1.1