Montserrat vs Raleway
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
The quick brown fox 0123456789
Matt McInerney · 2010 · weights 300, 400, 500, 600, 700
At a glance
- Personality
- Sturdy, vintage-poster
- Slender, elegant
- Feel
- Confident, urban
- Upscale, editorial
- Colour on page
- Heavier
- Lighter, airier
- Designer
- Julieta Ulanovsky, 2011
- Matt McInerney, 2010
MontserratRaleway
The honest take
Two elegant geometric-leaning sans faces popular for headings, with different weights of personality. Montserrat (Julieta Ulanovsky, 2011) is drawn from Buenos Aires signage: sturdy, geometric, faintly vintage, and confident at large sizes. Raleway (Matt McInerney, 2010) is more slender and refined — it began life as a single elegant thin weight, and even filled out to a family it keeps that fashion-magazine delicacy, with a distinctive w and a lighter overall colour on the page. Choose Montserrat for solid, characterful headings with poster heritage. Choose Raleway for a more elegant, upscale, editorial feel — think fashion, hospitality, minimalist portfolios. Neither is a great long-body face; both live in headings and short display lines, where Montserrat reads bolder and Raleway reads finer.
The x-ray
Same size, same baseline — Montserrat over Raleway. 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: Montserrat · Raleway