Fira (typeface)

Fira Sans is a humanist sans-serif typeface designed by Erik Spiekermann, Ralph du Carrois, Anja Meiners, Botio Nikoltchev of Carrois Type Design, and Patryk Adamczyk of Mozilla Corporation. The typeface was originally commissioned by Telefónica and Mozilla Corporation as part of the joint effort during the development of Firefox OS. It is a slightly wider and calmer adaptation of Spiekermann's typeface Meta, which was used as Mozilla's brand typeface at the time, but optimized for legibility on (small) screens. With the name “Fira,” Mozilla wanted to communicate the concepts of fire, light, and joy, but with connotatively agnostic language intended to signal the project's global nature. Fira was released in 2013 initially under the Apache License, and later reissued under the SIL Open Font License.

In its first 2013 release, Fira Sans was available in four weights with corresponding italics: light, regular, medium, and bold. In May 2014, the number of weights was increased to 16. In 2015, Mozilla added a condensed style. The family has a large character set that includes text figures and small caps.

In 2016, with version 4.2, the Mozilla Corporation ended their participation in the Fira Sans project; however, the project was continued by Berlin-based foundry bBox Type GmbH and its partners. That same year, bBox Type GmbH released Fira Sans version 4.301—the final iteration of Fira Sans—and announced that “any future developments will be based on FiraGO.”

Fira Sans is the font of choice for the Government of Iceland.