E is for Epilogue
Published by Nick at
Welcome to the fifth consecutive post in my 26 Days of Type series. My goal for this series is to highlight typography in an accessible way, and part of that is including several free and open-source fonts.
Epilogue falls into that free and open-source category, and I’m highlighting it for a few reasons. It’s a pretty high-quality and versatile font. Epilogue features alternate characters, small caps, both proportional and tabular numerals, fractions, arrows, and a wide range of currency, punctuation, and other symbols.
Epilogue comes with alternates for six characters, among other features
It’s also a unique design. To my eye, it has elements of both geometric and traditional grotesque sans serifs. But two characters that immediately stick out are the default lowercase g with the open loop and upward-facing ear, and the slightly rounded upper left corner in the lowercase t. It’s all about the details! I also find that the capital letters have an almost semi-condensed appearance compared to the lowercase, especially characters like D, E, F, L, and T. The contrast is not quite as dramatic as a typeface like Stratos by Production Type, though.
Here’s the type designer, Ty Finck, explaining Epilogue in his own words:
Sometimes you need a clean and crisp go-to font that isn’t preinstalled on every computer in the world. Epilogue was made for that. It is familiar but unique enough to be memorable. This makes it both easy to use and a joy to apply. The range of weights (Thin/100 to Black/900) make it easy to accommodate any size requirement, on screen and in print. And with the variable option you can choose your own weight, like 314 or 567. If the thin is feeling too thin try 150, it’s all good.
I used Epilogue for the headings on a previous incarnation of my website (2020-2023), and I would totally look for a reason to use this again on another project. The quality and level of detail put into this design make it a great choice for an open-source project or anything on a budget. The variable fonts are a great option for performance considerations, too.
Epilogue comes in weights from 100 to 900 and anywhere in between.
See Epilogue in use
- The Etcetera Type Company website features Epilogue prominently.
- New Lines Magazine uses Epilogue as the body font in all its articles.
- Envisioning Justice, a website by Illinois Humanities uses Epilogue for pretty much all text.