Free Font Friday: Unbounded

by Taylor Slattery | February 23, 2023

Unbounded is an open-source typeface created by the type design practice, NaN. Aside from its unique appearance, Unbounded also has a rather unique origin story. Unbounded was funded by the Polkadot network, making it one of the first on-chain typefaces. The project itself is rather ambitious in scale as well. True to its name, Unbounded boasts support for hundreds of languages worldwide thanks to its hefty set of over 1300 glyphs, which make the typeface accessible even to the often neglected languages of Africa, which require specific typographic considerations. If you found yourself rubbing your eyes when you first saw Unbounded, don’t worry, your vision is fine. Unbounded makes use of several unique construction techniques that can play tricks on your eyes at smaller sizes. The main culprits responsible for Unbounded’s playful appearance are its “chevron stem” and “side-eye counters”, both of which cut into the stem in unexpected ways and give the type an overall forward-leaning sense of movement. The “side-eye counters” in particular have a fun optical effect when placed back-to-back, like in the word, “absent.”