Inter vs Work Sans
Two sans-serif faces, set live below in their own letters — then the honest take on which to pick and when.
At a glance
- Optimised for
- All sizes, especially small
- Mid-size on-screen text
- Personality
- Engineered, neutral
- Grotesque with character
- Weights
- 400–700, four steps
- 300–700, five steps
- Designer
- Rasmus Andersson, 2017
- Wei Huang, 2015
InterWork Sans
The honest take
Both are clean sans-serifs, but they optimise for different distances. Inter (Rasmus Andersson, 2017) is engineered for on-screen UI at every size, with a tall x-height and open apertures that keep small text razor-sharp. Work Sans (Wei Huang, 2015) is a grotesque explicitly optimised in its middle weights for on-screen text at mid-size, while its lighter and heavier extremes lean toward display use — so it has a little more personality in its bones. Choose Inter for dense interfaces and body text that has to survive at 12px. Choose Work Sans when you want a slightly warmer, more characterful grotesque for headings and comfortable mid-size reading. Both cover roughly 300/400–700; Inter is the more clinically legible, Work Sans the more expressive.
The x-ray
Same size, same baseline — Inter over Work Sans. 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.