Lato vs Montserrat
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
Julieta Ulanovsky · 2011 · weights 400, 500, 600, 700
At a glance
- Best role
- Body text
- Headlines
- Style
- Warm humanist sans
- Geometric display sans
- Reads well at length
- Yes
- No — for headings
- Designer
- Łukasz Dziedzic, 2010
- Julieta Ulanovsky, 2011
LatoMontserrat
The honest take
These two are less rivals than teammates, because they answer different questions. Lato (Łukasz Dziedzic, 2010) is a warm humanist sans built for comfortable body text — softly rounded, unassuming, easy to read in long paragraphs and forms. Montserrat (Julieta Ulanovsky, 2011) is a geometric display sans drawn from vintage Buenos Aires signage, made to command headings, not to fill columns. Choose Lato when you need a dependable body face with a touch of warmth. Choose Montserrat when you need a characterful, poster-flavoured heading. The most honest advice is to use both: Montserrat for the headline, Lato for the running text — a classic, safe pairing. Forced to pick one for everything, Lato is the better all-rounder, since Montserrat tires the eye at length.
The x-ray
Same size, same baseline — Lato over Montserrat. 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: Lato · Montserrat