Merriweather vs Source Serif 4
Two serif faces, set live below in their own letters — then the honest take on which to pick and when.
The quick brown fox 0123456789
Frank Grießhammer (Adobe) · 2014 · weights 400, 500, 600, 700
At a glance
- Feel
- Sturdy, slightly condensed
- Refined, transitional
- Pairs natively with
- Standalone
- Source Sans family
- Weights
- 400 / 700
- 400–700, four steps
- Designer
- Sorkin Type, 2010
- Frank Grießhammer (Adobe), 2014
MerriweatherSource Serif 4
The honest take
Two screen-ready text serifs with different temperaments. Merriweather (Sorkin Type, 2010) is a sturdy, slightly condensed serif with a large x-height and strong slabby serifs, built to stay legible and dense in long articles and rougher rendering; it ships only 400 and 700. Source Serif 4 (Frank Grießhammer for Adobe, 2014) is a transitional serif in the Fournier tradition, designed as the serif companion to Source Sans, with cleaner, more refined lines, moderate contrast and a 400–700 weight range. Choose Merriweather for maximum robustness and a bit of grit in dense body copy. Choose Source Serif 4 for a more elegant, evenly modulated read and finer weight control, or when you want it to harmonise with Source Sans in a system. Merriweather is the sturdier workhorse; Source Serif 4 the more polished, coordinated serif.
The x-ray
Same size, same baseline — Merriweather over Source Serif 4. 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: Merriweather · Source Serif 4