When we rebuilt Coursera's brand in 2020, choosing a typeface wasn't just about how it looked. It had to solve three real problems.

Language support. Coursera is translated into dozens of languages. The type had to work in all of them.

Page weight. Heavy font files slow pages down, and for learners in countries where data is expensive, that's a real barrier.

Cost. Licensing a commercial font at Coursera's traffic would have been a major expense, every year.

Source Sans Pro, in 582 languages

I chose Source Sans Pro. It's modern and unfussy, round enough to feel friendly without being childish, and very readable. It supports 582 languages, so Coursera looks like Coursera in any alphabet. It's open source and free for commercial use, which meant significant savings every year. And it's built into Google Workspace, so even internal documents could stay on brand without anyone installing anything.

Source Sans Pro.

The constraint pointed to the better answer

A beautiful licensed typeface that loaded slowly in Lagos or couldn't set Bengali wouldn't have been a better brand. It would have been a worse one for the people we were building it for.

With the product team, I also paired it with background and text colors that met accessibility standards, so the type stayed readable for everyone.

The type in use on Coursera's homepage.

Typography direction by me, as part of Coursera's 2020 rebrand.

See the full rebrand →