---
title: "Open Sans (2011) — Steve Matteson"
description: "Open Sans was designed by Steve Matteson in 2011. What it signals, where you have seen it."
url: https://atoneplace.net/font/open-sans/
site: "At One Place"
---

# Open Sans

**Open Sans: Steve Matteson, 2011**

Sans-serif · A website built between 2012 and 2018. Neutral, open, free.

Commissioned by Google and released under an open licence, which is the whole story: a competent, unobjectionable humanist sans that costs nothing made it the default choice for a generation of websites. It shares its skeleton with Matteson's earlier Droid Sans.

## The facts

- **Designed by:** Steve Matteson
- **Released:** 2011
- **Classification:** Sans-serif
- **What it signals now:** A website built between 2012 and 2018. Neutral, open, free.

## Where you have seen it

- An enormous share of the web through Google Fonts
- Many university and government sites

## Other typefaces from the 2010s

| Typeface | Year | Designer | What it signals |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Roboto | 2011 | Christian Robertson | Android. Google. An app. |
| San Francisco | 2014 | Apple | An Apple device, since 2015. |
| Inter | 2017 | Rasmus Andersson | A software product designed after about 2019. Screen-native, neutral, everywhere. |

> This page describes the typeface rather than showing it. Displaying a specimen requires a licensed font file and almost none of these may be redistributed, so the descriptions name the letters to look at instead.

## Common questions

### Who designed Open Sans?

Steve Matteson, in 2011.

### What is Open Sans used for?

A website built between 2012 and 2018. Neutral, open, free. You will have seen it on An enormous share of the web through Google Fonts, Many university and government sites.

## Related pages

- [Typefaces from the 2010s](https://atoneplace.net/font/decade/2010s/)
- [Akzidenz-Grotesk](https://atoneplace.net/font/akzidenz-grotesk/)
- [Franklin Gothic](https://atoneplace.net/font/franklin-gothic/)
- [Johnston](https://atoneplace.net/font/johnston/)
- [Futura](https://atoneplace.net/font/futura/)
- [Gill Sans](https://atoneplace.net/font/gill-sans/)
- [Helvetica](https://atoneplace.net/font/helvetica/)
- [Univers](https://atoneplace.net/font/univers/)
- [Optima](https://atoneplace.net/font/optima/)

## Sources

- Official vendor product documentation — At One Place (/about/)