Google Fonts

Description file

🦉 The DESCRIPTION.en_us.html file contains the information that appears in the #About section on any specimen page of Google Fonts to give further information about the font family.

This file will be created by the team member onboarding the font. Thus the actual file a designer should write carefully would be the README.md file as the information provided in it is crucial to building a good #About section.
Background reading:
must→ README file

Table of contents

Requirements

To contribute, see <a href="https://github.com/owner/fontname">github.com/owner/fontname</a>

See Zen+Antique#about as an example, provided by this file DESCRIPTION.en_us.html.

Format text with the font family

You may format text with the font family by using HTML span tags with the "autonym" class. This should not be used to style the entire document. Use it sparingly to document available features in the font family. For example, to style the text “THIS TEXT” with the font family, enter HTML like this:

<span class="autonym">THIS TEXT</span>

Example

Without localised text

See Space+Grotesk#about provided by DESCRIPTION.en_us.html as an example: it gives plenty of links (mini-website, original authors, referenced font published in GF), and follows all requirements.

Html snippet

<p>Space Grotesk is a proportional sans-serif typeface variant based on <a href="https://www.colophon-foundry.org">Colophon Foundry's</a> fixed-width <a href="https://fonts.google.com/specimen/Space+Mono">Space Mono</a> family (2016). 
Originally designed by <a href="https://fonts.floriankarsten.com">Florian Karsten</a> in 2018, Space Grotesk retains the monospace's idiosyncratic details while optimizing for improved readability at non-display sizes.</p>

<p><a href=https://floriankarsten.github.io/space-grotesk/><b>→ floriankarsten.github.io/space-grotesk</b><a><p>

<p>Space Grotesk includes Latin Vietnamese, Pinyin, and all Western, Central, and South-Eastern European language support, as well as several OpenType features (old-style and tabular figures, superscript and subscript numerals, fractions, stylistic alternates).</p>

<p>To contribute, see <a href="https://github.com/floriankarsten/space-grotesk" target="_blank">github.com/floriankarsten/space-grotesk</a>.</p>

Result on Google Fonts

About Space Grotesk

Space Grotesk is a proportional sans-serif typeface variant based on Colophon Foundry’s fixed-width Space Mono family (2016). Originally designed by Florian Karsten in 2018, Space Grotesk retains the monospace’s idiosyncratic details while optimizing for improved readability at non-display sizes.

→ floriankarsten.github.io/space-grotesk

Space Grotesk includes Latin Vietnamese, Pinyin, and all Western, Central, and South-Eastern European language support, as well as several OpenType features (old-style and tabular figures, superscript and subscript numerals, fractions, stylistic alternates).

To contribute, see github.com/floriankarsten/space-grotesk.

With localised text

If the “first” script of your font is not Latin, we strongly recommend you to also provide a translation of the description using the actual main script. This localised text must be in the same html snippet as the english text.

See Zen+Antique#about as an example, provided by this file DESCRIPTION.en_us.html.

Html snippet

<p>Zen Antique features two kinds of Antique Japanese with Kanji.
The impression of the weights (thickness) of strokes are different among characters—Hiragana and Latin alphabets are slightly lighter, 
while Katakana and Kanji are slightly heavier, which gives the unique rhythm and taste in this font.
<a href="https://fonts.google.com/specimen/Zen+Antique+Soft">Zen Antique Soft</a> has a slightly rounded effect on the corners.</p>

<p>To contribute to the project, visit <a href="https://github.com/googlefonts/zen-antique">github.com/googlefonts/zen-antique</a></p>
<p>Zen Antique には、古風な雰囲気の二種類の漢字を含む日本語書体があります。
文字によって画線の太さに変化があり、ひらがなと欧文は細め、カタカナと漢字は太めで、フォントに独特のリズムと味わいを与えています。
また、<a href="https://fonts.google.com/specimen/Zen+Antique+Soft?subset=japanese">Zen Antique Soft</a> では、角が少し丸くなっています。</p>

<p>このプロジェクトに参加して貢献したい方は、次の URL をご参照ください。<a href="https://github.com/googlefonts/zen-antique">github.com/googlefonts/zen-antique</a></p>

Result on Google Fonts

About Zen Antique

Zen Antique features two kinds of Antique Japanese with Kanji. The impression of the weights (thickness) of strokes are different among characters—Hiragana and Latin alphabets are slightly lighter, while Katakana and Kanji are slightly heavier, which gives the unique rhythm and taste in this font. Zen Antique Soft has a slightly rounded effect on the corners.

To contribute to the project, visit github.com/googlefonts/zen-antique

Zen Antique には、古風な雰囲気の二種類の漢字を含む日本語書体があります。 文字によって画線の太さに変化があり、ひらがなと欧文は細め、カタカナと漢字は太めで、フォントに独特のリズムと味わいを与えています。 また、Zen Antique Soft では、角が少し丸くなっています。

このプロジェクトに参加して貢献したい方は、次の URL をご参照ください。github.com/googlefonts/zen-antique

The Article

The Article is a new expanded version of the DESCRIPTION.en_us.html file that can include images and longer-form information and content. It appears on the Google Fonts site as the main content in the About & License section. For example, see the About page for Gulzar, and then view the ofl/gulzar directory in the Google Fonts repo: github.com/google/fonts/tree/main/ofl/gulzar.

The ARTICLE.en_us.html file and images should live in an article/ directory alongside the METDATA.pb file in the root of the ofl/fontname directory. Typically, only the Noto fonts are expected to combine the DESCRIPTION.en_us.html and ARTICLE.en_us.html files. For all the other families (non-Noto), if an article with images is added, the description should be overwritten by the Article. This means we should shift all the Description content into the Article and keep and empty the DESCRIPTION.en_us.html — note that dev-sandbox will be broken if you remove the description file, so don’t.

Here are some guidelines for how to prepare the article/ directory and files:

Images

Allowed HTML elements: Same as description with the addition of <img> and more elements including: <a>, <b>, <blockquote>, <code>, <em>, <figcaption>, <figure>, <hr>, <h3>, <h4>, <h5>, <i>, <img>, <li>, <p>, <pre>, <span>, <strong>, <ul>, <ol>, <sub> Forbidden HTML elements: Remain the same, including: <applet>, <base>, <embed>, <form>, <frame>, <frameset>, <head>, <iframe>, <link>, <math>, <meta>, <object>, <script>, <style>, <svg>, <template>