DM Sans vs Poppins
Two sans-serif faces, set live below in their own letters — then the honest take on which to pick and when.
The quick brown fox 0123456789
Colophon Foundry, Jonny Pinhorn · 2019 · weights 400, 500, 700
The quick brown fox 0123456789
Indian Type Foundry · 2014 · weights 300, 400, 500, 600, 700
At a glance
- Geometry
- Restrained, low-contrast
- Pure, circular
- Best role
- Headings + body / UI
- Bold headlines
- Scripts
- Latin
- Latin + Devanagari
- Designer
- Colophon Foundry, 2019
- Indian Type Foundry, 2014
DM SansPoppins
The honest take
Both are geometric sans faces with a friendly modern feel, but at different scales of geometry. Poppins (Indian Type Foundry, 2014) is near-pure geometry — circular bowls, monolinear strokes — which reads big, round and cheerful and is a favourite for hero headings; it also covers Devanagari. DM Sans (Colophon Foundry, 2019) is lower-contrast and more restrained, with slightly smaller counters and a tidier, more UI-appropriate rhythm that behaves better in body text and interface labels. Choose Poppins for bold, rounded, approachable headlines and marketing type. Choose DM Sans when you want geometric warmth that still works across a whole product — headings and body alike — without the roundness dominating. Poppins is the louder display face; DM Sans the quieter workhorse.
The x-ray
Same size, same baseline — DM Sans over Poppins. Where they agree the strokes merge; where they argue, fringes.
“Hamburgefonstiv” is the type designer's test word — it carries most of the shapes that give a face away.