GT Canon
Family overview
- Condensed
- S Light Italic
- M Light Italic
- L Light Italic
- S Regular Italic
- M Regular Italic
- L Regular Italic
- S Medium Italic
- M Medium Italic
- L Medium Italic
- S Semibold Italic
- M Semibold Italic
- L Semibold Italic
- S Bold Italic
- M Bold Italic
- L Bold Italic
- S Heavy Italic
- M Heavy Italic
- L Heavy Italic
- S Black Italic
- M Black Italic
- L Black Italic
- Narrow
- S Light Italic
- M Light Italic
- L Light Italic
- S Regular Italic
- M Regular Italic
- L Regular Italic
- S Medium Italic
- M Medium Italic
- L Medium Italic
- S Semibold Italic
- M Semibold Italic
- L Semibold Italic
- S Bold Italic
- M Bold Italic
- L Bold Italic
- S Heavy Italic
- M Heavy Italic
- L Heavy Italic
- S Black Italic
- M Black Italic
- L Black Italic
- Standard
- S Light Italic
- M Light Italic
- L Light Italic
- S Regular Italic
- M Regular Italic
- L Regular Italic
- S Medium Italic
- M Medium Italic
- L Medium Italic
- S Semibold Italic
- M Semibold Italic
- L Semibold Italic
- S Bold Italic
- M Bold Italic
- L Bold Italic
- S Heavy Italic
- M Heavy Italic
- L Heavy Italic
- S Black Italic
- M Black Italic
- L Black Italic
- Extended
- S Light Italic
- M Light Italic
- L Light Italic
- S Regular Italic
- M Regular Italic
- L Regular Italic
- S Medium Italic
- M Medium Italic
- L Medium Italic
- S Semibold Italic
- M Semibold Italic
- L Semibold Italic
- S Bold Italic
- M Bold Italic
- L Bold Italic
- S Heavy Italic
- M Heavy Italic
- L Heavy Italic
- S Black Italic
- M Black Italic
- L Black Italic
- Expanded
- Mono
- Light Italic
- Regular Italic
- Medium Italic
- Semibold Italic
- Bold Italic
- Heavy Italic
- Black Italic
Subfamilies
- Standard S LightTension as a whole does not arise from the unrestrained or untamed wildness of individual elements. On the contrary, it is the right balance of unity and discipline on the one hand, and deviation on the other. In political and social contexts, the dissolution of tension is a noble and worthy pursuit. In design, it all too often leads to illegibility. This applies in both directions. After all, what is attraction, what is eroticism? The casual display of the fully revealed whole, or the play of gradually unveiling its parts? No tension, no relation.
- Standard M LightNo doubt the feat was easy to Mr. Utterson; for he was undemonstrative at the best, and even his friendship seemed to be founded in a similar catholicity of good-nature. It is the mark of a modest man to accept his friendly circle ready-made from the hands of opportunity; and that was the lawyer’s way.
- Standard L LightBring into view, make present, display. A display is not just what is shown but the act of showing itself. To make something appear as something. Since we not only see what is visible but the amorphous, fractioned mass of the invisible, that underlies it, overshadows it, precedes it and lingers on.
- Standard S Light ItalicNo doubt the feat was easy to Mr. Utterson; for he was undemonstrative at the best, and even his friendship seemed to be founded in a similar catholicity of good-nature. It is the mark of a modest man to accept his friendly circle ready-made from the hands of opportunity; and that was the lawyer’s way.
- Standard M Light ItalicMoving a vector between applications can result in measurable shifts caused by floating-point limitations and incompatible Bézier implementations. In typography, the discrepancy is heightened: glyph outlines include instructions (hinting) that govern their behaviour at specific sizes, which are lost when text is converted to outlines. Thus, even in fields predicated on precision, scale introduces qualitative change not as an exception but as a structural condition.
- Standard L Light ItalicAnd yet, justification can mean a speech act of rare agency, inhabited with a groundless sorrow over the circumstances that necessitate it. Things should have been the other way around. From the start.
- Standard S RegularThe scene is laid in the house of Cephalus at the Piraeus; and the whole dialogue is narrated by Socrates the day after it actually took place to Timaeus, Hermocrates, Critias, and a nameless person, who are introduced in the Timaeus.
- Standard M RegularJustification is a responsive act, regardless of whether what is to be justified lies in the past or in the future, as any justification presupposes something that has gone before. If that something points forwards, its intention is at least roughly outlined (by virtue of its potential to be realised).
- Standard L RegularConsidering that the little party had been seated round the tea-table for less than twenty minutes, the animation observable on their faces, and the amount of sound they were producing collectively, were very creditable to the hostess.
- Standard S Regular ItalicMathematically this is correct; the computational model of points, curves, and transformations retains its internal precision at any size. Yet, in practice, vectors are always realised within systems that impose discrete constraints. Every display, printer, and imaging device ultimately renders to a raster.
- Standard M Regular ItalicA face embodies character: the severity of a brutalist façade, the lightness of thin display cut, the friendliness of rounded terminals. The face is also about recognition: we know a style by its face, we choose an object because of the impression it projects.
- Standard L Regular ItalicUncle Henry never laughed. He worked hard from morning till night and did not know what joy was. He was gray also, from his long beard to his rough boots, and he looked stern and solemn, and rarely spoke.
- Standard S MediumThe way biological systems (cells, organs, ecosystems) shift their dynamics as they grow. The contrast between quantum behaviour and classical mechanics. In digital graphics, the notion of scalability is commonly treated as resolved: vector graphics are assumed to be infinitely and losslessly scalable.
- Standard M MediumDepends on a ruler who can be deceived, attacked, and overthrown. Higher power unfolds beyond that. Smart, gentle, even “positive” power operates through consent, self-optimisation, and internalisation, not through prohibition or force.
- Standard L MediumWe stand on a field and throw a stone. We follow the motion of the stone. How can we be sure that it is the stone that is moving and not the surroundings? A well-known phenomenologist devoted a handful of densely written pages to investigating this process and championed a view that describes movement as a coherent, holistic activity that cannot be adequately described by either a mechanical or a philosophical view of consciousness.
- Standard S Medium ItalicOne of the great challenges in typography awaits both the typesetter and the type designer in the same place, and it concerns writers no less. It is not only the not-so-well-tempered poster that requires the right use of tension. It is especially the longer texts whose harmony and carrying power can be sustained only by maintaining tension.
- Standard M Medium ItalicHow does a bold relate to its regular? How does balance persist across axes? Balance champions accuracy over precision. It is about what we see, not what we measure. And the eye likes balance, not boredom. Balance is invitation.
- Standard L Medium ItalicBring into view, make present, display. A display is not just what is shown but the act of showing itself. To make something appear as something. Since we not only see what is visible but the amorphous, fractioned mass of the invisible, that underlies it, overshadows it, precedes it and lingers on.
- Standard S SemiboldIn recent years, few terms in design have enjoyed such a meteoric rise as the two letters U and X. User experience quickly became the measure of all things. At first glance, there seems to be little wrong with that. Anyone who strives to offer users the best possible experience does not have to be a showman or a charlatan who turns even the simplest interaction into an experience.
- Standard M SemiboldAn instance can be a subsequently submitted determination of a limited point in time. In most cases, however, it marks the section of a defined sequence.
- Standard L SemiboldHow does a bold relate to its regular? How does balance persist across axes? Balance champions accuracy over precision. It is about what we see, not what we measure. And the eye likes balance, not boredom. Balance is invitation.
- Standard S Semibold ItalicThe subject possesses and orders; the object obeys and performs. More powerful still is the one who no longer needs to command at all, the one to whom others obey pre-emptively and unreservedly. Yet even this preventive, often invisible power still relies on a distinction between subject and object.
- Standard M Semibold ItalicIt is one of the oldest branches of biological science, with its origins lying in early human attempts to understand the body by cutting it open, drawing it and naming its parts.
- Standard L Semibold ItalicAn edge is both an end and a beginning. It is a marker in both senses: An edge causes the change, just as it indicates it. So far, so mundane. Nevertheless, the consequences are significant. Only that which is limited can be surpassed.
- Standard S BoldDesign is always an act of presumption. I do not design from the position that I am entitled to. I am not a chair. Horses have never painted humans on a wall. It is a common misconception that the means of design must reflect—or even find their equivalent in—the social and biographical conditions of their production.
- Standard M BoldThe original or merely a template? Traces? And who is to say that our sense of things, our emotions and feelings, are nothing but an unwitting attempt to quote the stories and songs that have moved us?
- Standard L BoldIt is one of the oldest branches of biological science, with its origins lying in early human attempts to understand the body by cutting it open, drawing it and naming its parts.
- Standard S Bold ItalicNodes mark the transition into the technical age by how they turn form into data. Designers and engineers already thought in terms of measurements, geometry, and even coordinate-like reasoning long before the use of computers.
- Standard M Bold ItalicTension as a whole does not arise from the unrestrained or untamed wildness of individual elements. On the contrary, it is the right balance of unity and discipline on the one hand, and deviation on the other. In political and social contexts, the dissolution of tension is a noble and worthy pursuit. In design, it all too often leads to illegibility. This applies in both directions. After all, what is attraction, what is eroticism? The casual display of the fully revealed whole, or the play of gradually unveiling its parts? No tension, no relation.
- Standard L Bold ItalicAlthough we could describe text, in contrast to images, as a medium of lines (and here the line becomes a demarcation line on all significative levels), it is images—or more precisely, the pictorial nature of the visual—that, alongside the virtual, mathematical construct, allows for manifestation of lines in the first place.
- Standard S HeavySince design means composing contrasts, creating tension can be a consequence. It’s not inevitable though. Contrast is no guarantee that tension will emerge. Quite the opposite. Tension is a rare commodity. Too much,and it dissipates. Often, the sweet spot lies in drawing the bow just far enough that it does not break.
- Standard M HeavyA weight here presupposes a counter there, even if that counter is nothing but the absence of its here with reversed signs. Balance does not eliminate difference; it activates it, arranges it, gives it place.
- Standard L HeavyThis circumstance informs all aspects of the typeface design, from the architecture of the letters and the design of individual forms and components, to optical corrections (overshoot). Gravity manifests in stroke and proportion. The thickening of verticals, the grounding of serifs, the way curves rest against the baseline—all contribute to how a letter *sits *or stands..
- Standard S Heavy ItalicBoth arise in a mutual interplay. Although drawing has never been just a medium of representation, but always also one of operation, one that forces the model into a certain order (line, proportion, grid, materiality), the introduction of nodes has given this reciprocal relationship a significant influence on authorship, insofar as it shifts slightly ‘in favour’ of the model: digital drawing can no longer not be a model, and from now on, the designer can no longer purely be a drawer but is always also a model-builder. Nodes allow form to be computed.
- Standard M Heavy ItalicA face is presence. It looks back, even when it does not see. The face is exposure, vulnerability, recognition: it is how we appear to others, how we are held in relation. It is therefore always recognition and exemplification. Individual and collective.
- Standard L Heavy ItalicAnd also nodes are often defined more by their context than by their very coordinates. As junctions, connecting points or simply as a basic unit they fundamentally define the structure of data, the architecture of shapes.
- Standard S BlackSo let us think of designers as those who constantly operate on the edge—whether with and on forms of recognition, or by allowing in the different, which fills the constantly repeating cascade of differences (from sensuality to imagination, from imagination to memory, from memory to forgetting, and finally to creative power (and then the whole thing starts all over again)).
- Standard M BlackInstances correspond emphatically to design. Although the use of the term *instance *has become increasingly common in recent years, with specific uses in various disciplines, the underlying logic seems to have permeated the concept of design in an almost intrinsic way long before that.
- Standard L BlackNo doubt the feat was easy to Mr. Utterson; for he was undemonstrative at the best, and even his friendship seemed to be founded in a similar catholicity of good-nature. It is the mark of a modest man to accept his friendly circle ready-made from the hands of opportunity; and that was the lawyer’s way.
- Standard S Black ItalicBoth arise in a mutual interplay. Although drawing has never been just a medium of representation, but always also one of operation, one that forces the model into a certain order (line, proportion, grid, materiality), the introduction of nodes has given this reciprocal relationship a significant influence on authorship, insofar as it shifts slightly ‘in favour’ of the model: digital drawing can no longer not be a model, and from now on, the designer can no longer purely be a drawer but is always also a model-builder. Nodes allow form to be computed.
- Standard M Black ItalicDepends on a ruler who can be deceived, attacked, and overthrown. Higher power unfolds beyond that. Smart, gentle, even “positive” power operates through consent, self-optimisation, and internalisation, not through prohibition or force.
- Standard L Black ItalicIf my limited knowledge of physics, gained from school lessons long time ago, has enabled me to understand the theorists of general relativity correctly, the motion of our planets around the sun is only apparently circular, but rather a kind of straight line.
- Settings
Typeface information
GT Canon’s design is pragmatic but not static: movement and liveliness are embedded in the letterforms. It is our answer to what our digital times require of a serif today. It’s what a contemporary serif should be in both form and function. Like its sans serif sibling, GT Standard, it aims for modern functionality rather than stylistic reinvention.
Typeface features
OpenType features enable smart typography. You can use these features in most Desktop applications, on the web, and in your mobile apps. Each typeface contains different features. Below are the most important features included in GT Canon’s fonts:
- TNUM
- Tabular figures
0123456789
- ONUM
- Oldstyle figures
0123456789
- SMCP
- Small Caps
Anatomy
Typeface Minisite


- Visit the GT Canon minisite to discover more about the typeface family’s history and design concept.
GT Canon in use

