Lato vs Open 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
- Personality
- Warm, semi-condensed
- Neutral, open
- Body legibility
- Very good
- Excellent
- Heaviest weight
- 900 (Black)
- 700 (Bold)
- Designer
- Łukasz Dziedzic, 2010
- Steve Matteson, 2011
LatoOpen Sans
The honest take
Two humanist sans-serifs from the early 2010s that both became default body faces for a generation of websites. Open Sans (Steve Matteson, 2011) is the more openly neutral of the pair — upright, unhurried, drawn for maximum on-screen legibility and endlessly safe across blogs, dashboards and documents. Lato (Łukasz Dziedzic, 2010) carries a little more warmth and character: subtly rounded terminals and a semi-condensed feel that give paragraphs a gentle personality. For pure, get-out-of-the-way body text and forms, Open Sans is the surer default. For a corporate or portfolio voice that wants to feel approachable without shouting, Lato's warmth pays off. Lato also reaches a true black 900 weight for display lines, where Open Sans tops out at 700.
The x-ray
Same size, same baseline — Lato over Open 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.