Latin

Regular

Zed Round Variable

世界（world）一词在现代社会意为对所有事物的代称。在大多数的语境中，“世界”的含义更为狭义，经常与地球及其中的所有生命、与整个人类或与国际洲际范围相关联。在这个意义上，世界历史是指整个人类的历史，而世界政治是研究超越国家和大陆的问题的政治科学学科。诸如“世界宗教”、“世界语言”、“世界政府”、“世界大战”、“世界人口”、“世界经济”或及“世界冠军”等术语亦是如此。中文源自佛教概念，由“世”（时间）和“界”（空间）组合而成的世界（lokadhātu），即所谓由所有时间和空间组成的万事万物。唐神龙元年（705），《楞严经》具有文字记载。英语中为“world”，源自古英语“weorold”，指“人间”。现代翻译源自1912年《哲学字汇》将日语“sekai”与“world”、“cosmos”作为对应。“世界”在现代是人类文明所有一切的代称。狭义来讲，通常指人类现今所生活居住的地球，而更偏重于空间。在许多场合下，也以全球、环球（寰球）、环宇（寰宇）、国际、万国等词作为代称。在古代也常以天地、天下、人间、世间、世上、万物、自然等指代。人类所知的地球世界可以用一张世界地图来描述，分为七大洲四大洋。广义来讲，可等于宇宙，即包含了地球之外的空间。“宇宙”一词来源于古汉语，也意为时空的总和。英语中用拉丁词源的“universe”或希腊词源的“cosmos”代指地球世界和地外宇宙的总和。人类强调全世界的某一领域或体系时，也可用“世界”冠名，如植物世界、动物世界等。人类也可预测或设计未来的世界以及想像中的或许不存在的世界，叫做未来世界、虚构世界；当用现代科技手段构造和呈现不存在于现实的世界时，称为虚拟世界或虚拟现实。

Zed is a typeface designed for inclusivity and accessibility; in particular, it identifies and addresses situations where people are excluded from using certain technologies. We have <a href="https://www.typotheque.com/articles/designing-fonts-with-low-vision-readers-in-mind">tested the typefaces with help from visually impaired readers</a> and have worked with marginalised linguistic communities and native designers around the world. As a result, Zed is a highly accessible typeface for diverse populations.

Zed cover

Concept

Most 20th-century sans-serif typefaces are design compromises – they tend to be display typefaces that also have to work in text settings. Zed directly addresses this shortcoming, it is an uncompromising typeface family with two optical versions, with radically different text and display versions developed using the latest research into which letterforms are found the easiest to read by the widest range of readers. <a href="https://www.typotheque.com/articles/sans-for-small-text-sizes">Read about designing a sans-serif for small text.</a>

Zed super family, optical sizes

A sans for small text … and large.

We carried out a <a href="https://www.typotheque.com/articles/designing-fonts-with-low-vision-readers-in-mind">series of laboratory acuity tests at the National Centre of Ophthalmology</a> in Paris to determine the ideal letter proportions for their visually impaired patients. During the tests, <a href="http://www.typotheque.com/fonts/zed-text">Zed Text</a> was directly compared with – and outperformed – Helvetica in terms of speed of reading for all types of hospital patients. <a href="http://www.typotheque.com/fonts/zed-text-wide">Zed Text Wide</a> is an exceptionally readable typeface that has been shown to benefit healthy readers as well as those with visual impairments such as age-related macular degeneration, glaucoma or other diseases that severely impair focusing, like keratoconus.

Zed super family, research

Rooted in science

Imagine a design with three dimensions – weight, width and skew – that allows you to select a style at any point along these axes. This allows you to work with hundreds of defined fonts, or any interval between them. Then imagine adding another dimension that enables you to round any letter or symbol as you wish. The possibilities multiply. And now imagine adding a fifth dimension, one that controls optical size, whereby the shape and white space of letters can be adjusted to a fixed physical size for optimal legibility. Finally, imagine the cultural dimensions that Zed supports, in relation to most of the world’s scripts. This is the design space occupied by Zed, an unparalleled type system designed with information accessibility in mind.

Zed super family, variable axes

Wider, narrower, bolder, rounded, more slanted?

The world is diverse, as is the use of writing scripts, and so we are currently working with designers and communities worldwide on further language extensions to support Arabic, Armenian, Bangla, Canadian Syllabics, Cherokee, Chinese, Cyrillic, Devanagari, Georgian, Greek, Gujarati, Gurmukhi, Hebrew, Japanese, Kannada, Khmer, Korean, Lao, Malayalam, Meetei, Odia, Ol Chiki, Sinhala, Tamil, Telugu, and Thai. This makes Zed a truly accessible typeface and demonstrates Typotheque’s commitment to cultural diversity.

Zed super family, global font

Accessible everywhere

<a href="https://www.typotheque.com/books/zed-type-specimen">This type specimen</a> not only showcases the details of each style in the Zed super family, but also documents the design process and presents three new essays. <em>Designing fonts with low-vision readers in mind</em> documents the reading acuity experiment conducted at the National Centre of Ophthalmology in Paris, and two other essays cover designing sans-serif fonts for small text use and notes on designing Braille fonts. The <a href="https://www.typotheque.com/books/zed-type-specimen">80-pages book</a> includes information on 196 endangered languages, and the cover links this to the loss of biodiversity. <a href="https://www.typotheque.com/books/endangered-plants-cards">Check out also this series of postcards.</a>

Zed super family, type specimen

Printed type specimen

There are situations where words or translations are not enough, and in such circumstances icons, symbols and pictograms can be extremely effective. <a href="https://www.typotheque.com/fonts/zed-icons">Zed Icons</a> comes with hundreds of icons that break down traditional language barriers, and as with the rest of this type system, these icons are available in a range of weights and visual styles to match the proportions of the typeface employed by the user.

Communication without words

To create a truly accessible typeface, we went beyond the visual capacity to include Braille characters in Zed’s glyph set. Designing a Braille font, however, presents a whole new set of challenges, as it serves a group of users with different needs. We undertook an extensive review of literature and recommendations in order to understand the Braille system and its use in different regions. <a href="https://www.typotheque.com/articles/braille-character-spacing">Read more about Zed Braille.</a>

Zed super family, Braille

Braille

CJK (Chinese, Japanese and Korean) typography uses different conventions compared to Latin typesetting. <a href="https://www.typotheque.com/articles/typesetting-cjk-text">Read this article</a> to learn about the main typographic differences, including vertical and horizontal text orientation, line height requirements, text alignment, hyphenation practices and the distinct rules for line breaks and punctuation placement.

CJK typesetting principles

Chinese, Japanese and Korean typesetting

Chinese characters vary across East Asia due to regional language evolution and reform. Although Unicode unifies them into a single Chinese, Japanese and Korean (CJK) block, fonts also need to align with regional preferences. <a href="https://www.typotheque.com/articles/understanding-cjk-regional-character-variants">Read about the reasons behind these variations and how to go about choosing the right fonts</a>. When you order a Typotheque CJK font, you actually receive three fonts, each optimised for a different region. 

CJK regional character variants

Understanding CJK regional character variants

Cyrillic

Abaza

Abkhaz

Adyghe

Altai

Avar

Azeri (Cyrillic)

Azeri (Latin)

Balkar

Bashkir

Belarusian

Bosnian

Bulgarian

Buryat

Chechen

Chuvash

Crimean Tatar

Dargin

Dungan

Evenki

Gagauz

Ingush

Kabardian

Kalmyk

Karakalpak

Kazakh

Khakas

Kirghyz

Komi

Koryak

Kumyk

Lezgian

Macedonian

Manci

Mansi

Mari

Mongolian

Montenegrin

Mordvin (Erzya)

Mordvin (Moksha)

Muslim Tat, Latin

Nanai

Nenets

Nogai

Ossetic

Romanian

Russian

Rusyn 

Selkup

Serbian

Shor

Tabasaran

Tajik (Cyrillic)

Talysh, Latin

Tatar

Tsakhur

Turkmen

Tuva

Tuvan

Udmurt

Uighur

Ukrainian

Uzbek

Western Mari

Yakut

Greek

Greek (modern)

Abidji

Abron

Abua

Achinese

Achuar-Shiwiar

Acoli

Adangme

Adara

Adele

Adioukrou

Afar

Afrikaans

Agatu

Aghem

Agwagwune

Ahanta

Ahtna

Akoose

Alago

Albanian

Alekano

Aleut

Anaang

Anufo

Anyin

Ao Naga

Arabic, Chadian Spoken

Aragonese

Aromanian

Ashe

Asturian

Awak

Awing

Ayizo Gbe

Aymara

Baatonum

Bafia

Bafut

Baga Sitemu

Baka

Balanta-Ganja

Balinese

Bambara

Bamun, Latin

Banda, West Central

Bandi

Bangwinji

Baoulé

Bapuku

Bari

Basa

Basaa

Basque

Batak Toba

Bedawiyet

Bedjond

Bekwarra

Bemba

Bena

Bench

Beng

Benga

Berom

Bete-Bendi

Bété, Daloa

Bété, Guiberoua

Bhele

Bikol

Bilen

Bimoba

Bini

Birifor, Southern

Bisã

Bislama

Bissa

Blackfoot

Bokobaru

Bomu

Bozo, Hainyaxo

Breton

Bube

Buginese

Bulu

Bura-Pabir

Burak

Bushi

C’Lela

Cahungwarya

Cakfem-Mushere

Carib

Catalan

Cebaara Senoufo

Cebuano

Central Atlas Tamazight

Central Yupik

Chinese

Cantonese (Simplified)

Japanese

Korean

Design

Contributors

The clarity of Zed Round makes it suitable for user interfaces in apps and websites, especially those aimed at a wide audience. Its soft appearance makes digital environments feel more welcoming and less formal, enhancing the user experience.

Zed Round

Zed Round 中文