What does the suffix One mean in typeface names?

3 minute read

Typeface names

All fonts have names that try to allude to their style, and be it the Kiki or bouba effect or the correlation we have between names and facial features, we as humans have biases towards if we think a name fits something or not.

This is what inspired me to create The Font Game, where, with the the exception of already knowing the fonts by name, a player mostly guesses which of two names is the most fitting for the displayed font. Quickly I also realized that fonts may also show keywords in their names that may help differentiate it from other members of the same font family, or simply to illustrate some of it's characteristics, them being:

• Serif - Letters will have strokes that elongate past what's necessary for the font to be recognized.
• Sans (serif) - Absence of the Serif
• Mono - All letters will have the same exact width
• SC - Small caps, all letters appear uppercase, using height to differentiate cases
• Script - Similar to Handwriting
• One - These fonts are... uhm...

What does the suffix One mean?

There are 117 fonts with this suffix in Google Fonts at the time of writing.

At first, I assumed these were somehow tech related fonts, ones that would look good on a website showcase, or something along those lines, but after seeing fonts like Pirata One, Leckerli One or Croissant One I realized that that couldn't be it, as these fonts don't fit that notion and are so distinct from the other One fonts.

So I accepted my first instinct as being incorrect and decided to search for it's real meaning. However, I found exactly only one (no pun intended) result about this.

On this graphic design stack exchange thread from 2014 where user Jaromir the Greenhorn asks:

What does One mean in the name of various fonts?
I am not much of a typography expert. Unfortunately the word One is very common so Google/Bing return no reasonable results.

Bingo, this is exactly what I'm looking for, however, its one reply and further sub-replies seem dubious and hesitant on what it means, but leave a few suggestions:

• This is the version 1 of this font
• The PostScript type of the font is 1 (a font format used by Adobe (or something like that))
• Characteristic of fonts that are modern and look good in headlines
• No reason at all
• The sample typefaces have one weight and style available

Spoiler alert

That last one is almost the complete answer!

Speaking to experts

Well, at this point the only people that could know would be the font authors themselves, and as it turns out, font designers are nice people that will reply to your emails about their work.

After reaching out to 16 font authors (some with multiple One fonts under their belt), and receiving 8 answers, here are their paraphrased replies:

• I don't remember so well as it was 15 years ago, but I think google fonts One due to some naming issue, perhaps there was a font with that name already
• To allow for potentially more weights or versions of the same font, it doesn't make sense to me, but this was required so I complied
• Google required the One suffix as I think it's a naming convention for more "stylized" fonts. I believe all the other fonts that use this Suffix are decorated or stylized fonts
• Since our font was available in only one weight, the Google team suggested we add the suffix One to indicate that fact. So if you see a font name with One, you know it's a single-weight font.
• One was a Google naming convention designating there was only one variation and not a font family of light, regular, and bold versions.

Finally, there seems to be (mostly) a consensus that it's for fonts with just one weight or version. This was going to be the final answer, however, typeface designer Saurabh Sharma sent me a link to the complete answer to the question, an instruction page from Google Fonts mentioning the use of the suffix One:

If a family is a single weight and it visually doesn't have the appearance of a Regular weight , One must be appended to the family name and "Regular" used for the style name, since any family must contain a Regular.

Ah-ah! (+ TL;DR) The bolded text in that quote was the extra bit of context needed, this is the one visual characteristic that really brings all One fonts together, the irregular weight combined with only having one weight available, is the defining characteristic of a One font!

Did I miss something? Email me jorgermalves@protonmail.com

PS: I also secretly hope that there is a One font author out there that suffixed their font because they thought it was cool or fit the aesthetic of their font somehow.