Keep Calm

Keep Calm is a family of fonts developed from the now famous World War 2 poster that was designed in 1939 but never issued, then rediscovered in 2000. As well as the original Keep Calm font, the Medium weight of the poster, three new weights are available – Book (regular), Heavy and Light – and each comes with a complimentary Italic.

Version 2.0 (2017) is a comprehensive update which consists of numerous refinements and improvements across all weights. The family now contains a full complement of Latin Extended-A characters, Welsh diacritics and Irish dotted consonants. The four italics have been optically corrected with revised, ‘true italic’ forms of a and f.

The crown motif from the top of the Keep Calm poster is located at the plus minus ± and section § keystrokes (Alt 0177 and Alt 0167 on Windows). The lowercase g follows the Gill / Johnston eyeglass model, but also included is an alternative, single-story g at the Alt G keystroke (Alt 0169 on a Windows keyboard), the normal location of the copyright symbol which has been relocated elsewhere. An alternative lowercase t, without the curved wedge cutaway, is provided at the Alt T (dagger) keystroke (Alt 0134 on Windows).

Read the story behind the Keep Calm fonts in the Kernel.