Inter vs Space Grotesk
Two sans-serif faces, set live below in their own letters — then the honest take on which to pick and when.
At a glance
- Personality
- Neutral, invisible
- Quirky, techy grotesque
- Best role
- Body and UI
- Headlines and brand
- Weights
- 400–700, four steps
- 400 / 500 / 700
- Designer
- Rasmus Andersson, 2017
- Florian Karsten, 2018
InterSpace Grotesk
The honest take
A neutral workhorse against a characterful upstart. Inter (Rasmus Andersson, 2017) is the invisible UI default — engineered for clarity at every size, opinion-free, the face you reach for when the content should be the only thing anyone notices. Space Grotesk (Florian Karsten, 2018) is a retooled, proportional take on Space Mono: a grotesque with quirky details — the distinctive g, the slightly squared curves — that give headings and brand type a techy, contemporary edge. Use Inter for dense body text and product UI where neutrality is the point. Use Space Grotesk for display, logos and hero lines where you want personality and a startup-modern flavour. A common and honest pattern is to pair them: Space Grotesk headings over Inter body.
The x-ray
Same size, same baseline — Inter over Space Grotesk. 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.
Read more
More about each face: Inter · Space Grotesk