Free Font Friday: Karantina

Karantina is a condensed display typeface family created by Rony Koch. Karantina, like probably many creative projects during the last year, was born out of boredom during the COVID-19 lockdown. It’s a clean, modern take on a display serif with tall, proud letterforms that feel distinguished yet casual. The Karantina family consists of 3 different weights: light, regular, and bold. With some pretty drastic jumps between the weights, the set offers a lot of range in terms of contrast and is suitable for many possible applications.

Karantina maintains good legibility despite its tight spacing and some of the negative spaces in the letterforms becoming pretty small in the bold weight. A subtle serif is more noticeable in the regular and light weights and just barely detectable in the bold, but adds some additional visual interest to the otherwise uniform strokes.

Karantina’s tall x-height also lends to the condensed typefaces’ tall, vertical appearance and supports a more comfortable read. Karantina would be a great choice for headlines paired with a sans serif for the body and would also make a great choice for posters or packaging—anywhere where space is a premium. I think it would work particularly well for beverage labeling.

Karantina is available in both Latin and Hebrew alphabets in 3 weights, and you can find it for free here.