Nunito vs Quicksand
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
Andrew Paglinawan · 2008 · weights 300, 400, 500, 600, 700
At a glance
- Construction
- Balanced, rounded terminals
- Geometric, circular
- Body text
- Works well
- Better for headings
- Weights
- 400 / 600 / 700 / 800
- 300–700, five steps
- Designer
- Vernon Adams, 2011
- Andrew Paglinawan, 2008
NunitoQuicksand
The honest take
Both are rounded, friendly sans-serifs, but they round in different ways and suit different jobs. Nunito (Vernon Adams, 2011) is a balanced sans with softly rounded terminals — approachable, but with enough weight and a full 400–800 range to carry real body text and headings alike. Quicksand (Andrew Paglinawan, 2008) is a geometric display sans built on near-perfect circles: charming and playful at large sizes, but its thin, monolinear, low-contrast forms get fragile and tiring in long paragraphs. Use Nunito when you want warmth that still works as a body face across a whole site. Use Quicksand for logos, headings and short friendly labels where its geometric roundness is the whole point. In short: Nunito is the workhorse, Quicksand is the accent.
The x-ray
Same size, same baseline — Nunito over Quicksand. 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.