Typography Now: Trends Shaping 2025

In 2025, Fonts are evolving in response to how we design, build, and experience the web. More than a list of style trends, this is a look at what’s happening in type right now: fonts adapting to performance needs, embracing flexibility, carrying stronger personalities, and pushing for greater inclusivity. Here are the key shifts shaping digital typography today.

Variable Fonts Go Mainstream

Variable fonts have been around for some time, but they’re now quickly becoming the new standard in typography. By combining multiple weights and styles into a single file, they remove the need for separate font files, reducing download sizes and improving performance across devices. The impact is clear: variable fonts not only boost speed but also support flexible, consistent visual identities across digital platforms.

Roboto Flex is a variable font that lets you tailor your digital experience. Image Source: Google

Chee is a variable font made to move and play. Image Source: ohnotype.co

Breaking the Sans‑Serif

For years, digital design was defined by neutral sans-serifs. Their clean simplicity felt modern, but it also left everything looking the same. In 2025, we’re seeing the resurgence of serifs and letters with character. Brands, designers and creators are embracing fonts that feel warmth and authentic. These typefaces often achieve those feelings through subtle irregularities, unique quirks or nostalgic aesthetic. Typography now has more personality, and audiences can feel the difference.

Burberry brought back the serifs in its new logo. Image Source: Burberry

In the endless scroll, letters can hint at drama, comedy, thrill, or calm in a single glance. Source: Netflix

Color Fonts

While it’s still an evolving technology, color fonts are gaining attention with recent technological advances, particularly the COLRv1 format and its growing support. These new wave of color fonts can include gradients and transparency, achieving effects that once required complex treatments to be done natively without sacrificing system performance or clean implementation. This open the door for bolder, more expressive graphics.

'Color' is now listed under Technology on the Google Fonts website.

Accessibility and Inclusivity in Typography

Accessibility and inclusivity are essential in product design. While color contrast, font size, and spacing are standard considerations, selecting the right typeface is equally crucial, elevating these principles to a higher level. Modern font families cover expansive language sets, ensuring a consistent brand voice from the Netherlands to Bangkok. Features like optical sizing and variable weights improve readability for diverse audiences. As the conversation around inclusivity in typography grows, designers are better equipped to create accessible digital experiences for all.

Noto is the largest source of fonts for endangered languages. Source: Google

Tuki is a font by Manuel Lopez Rocha that features latin alphabet characters specially adapted for the mixe language, along with a set of glyphs from the epi-olmec script. Source: Manuel Lopez Rocha

Letters as Playground

This end of the spectrum is pure expression. On social media, typography has become a playground for experimental forms. Custom letters, letterforms as pieces of art, 3D letters, and AI-assisted type all thrive in this space. Here, typography functions more like an image than text. These designs aren’t meant for long reading; they’re headlines or images that stop the scroll.

New stickers for Instagram designed by Don Carlos. Source: https://www.doncarrrlos.com/ instagram-evergreen-stickers

Instagram teamed up with Rosalía to release a limited-time font for Reels and Stories. Source: https://www.instagram.com/p/DLkjqIwMW-A/?hl=en&img_index=1

Custom Type: The New Brand Voice

Brands are increasingly investing in custom fonts, recognizing them as a strategic asset rather than just a design choice. A custom typeface ensures consistency, expresses brand personality, and can significantly reduce licensing costs at scale. More than just style, a bespoke font becomes a recognizable voice and an unmistakable piece of the brand’s DNA that audiences instantly identify.

San Francisco is Apple’s default system font for iOS, macOS, watchOS, and beyond — optimized for readability at every size.

TikTok Sans is designed and engineered by Grilli Type, Contrast Foundry, and Type Network. It's produced and maintained by TikTok (Design, Marketing, and Engineering).

Conclusion

Typography today it’s adaptive, expressive, inclusive, and personal. The right typeface isn’t just the face of your brand, it tells a story, sets a tone, and make the story feel human. Typography has always been about communicating a message. Now, it’s also about connection.