Ukraine has its own national font Zakon, which will gradually replace Russian fonts in state documents. It was created by Ukrainian designers, including authors of fonts for state services and the Armed Forces of Ukraine. One of the versions can already be downloaded and tested for free.
Ukraine has its own national font Zakon, which will gradually replace Russian fonts in state documents. It was created by Ukrainian designers, including authors of fonts for state services and the Armed Forces of Ukraine. One of the versions can already be downloaded and tested for free.
This was reported by the Ministry of Culture of Ukraine.
The fact is that fonts of Russian origin, in particular Izhitsa and Petersburg, are still used in Ukraine to design state certificates, diplomas, awards, and even plaques. The documents also contain fonts adapted to the Cyrillic alphabet by the Russian studio ParaType. Therefore, Zakon should become a Ukrainian alternative.
The national font was based on the works of Ukrainian artists and letterers, including Heorhiy Narbut, Vasyl Krychevsky, and Yakov Hnizdovsky. From them, the new font inherited unusual details, such as asymmetrical serifs on the letters, diamond-shaped dots above "i" and "ї", as well as a special spelling of "ї".
A team of four designers worked on Zakon:
Oleksiy Chekal is a calligrapher who created fonts for the Orthodox Church of Ukraine.
Gennady Zarechnyuk is a co-author of the Ukrainian fonts Kobzar KS, Zahar, and Dnipro.
Dmytro Rastvortsev is the author of e-Ukraine, which is used in government digital services, and one of the developers of the font for the Armed Forces of Ukraine.
Andriy Shevchenko is the author of the Arsenal font, which won the competition for a modern Ukrainian business font.
The project was led by military serviceman Taras Ishchyk, the author of the graphic style of the Armed Forces of Ukraine. The initiator of the creation of the national font was the Chairman of the Verkhovna Rada Ruslan Stefanchuk. The project was also supported by the company Work.ua.
Designers have prepared three headsets for different tasks:
Zakon Text — for regular documents: letters, orders, forms, and other texts. This version is free and available to everyone.
Zakon Decor — for ceremonial documents, awards, and decorative inscriptions.
Zakon Letterpress — specifically for printing originals of laws and other regulatory acts of the Verkhovna Rada.
There are no plans to immediately switch all government institutions to the new font. Initially, officials will test Zakon Text in their daily work, while designers will collect feedback and make changes if necessary.
Zakon Text is already available for download on the Ministry of Culture website. You can also leave feedback to the developers there.
Previously, dev.ua wrote about "Font Cutter" — a browser extension that recognizes Russian fonts on websites and offers to replace them with Ukrainian ones.
