Red Hat fonts have already been installed on all DoIT/AIMS managed PCs and Macs. Note this only covers systems owned by departments that contract with DoIT/AIMS for service, which encompasses about 8,500 campus computers. Folks managed by other IT teams will need to contact their own IT support to deploy these fonts, or install them themselves (see instructions below). Note that DoIT/AIMS will also be pre-loading the Red Hat fonts on all new computers that they manage going forward.
Install the fonts manually
There are two ways to download and install the free brand fonts, Red Hat Display and Red Hat Text.
1. Visit our Typography overview page and click the “Download” button under each font/typeface. This will download a zip file to your computer. Then follow the font installation instructions for Apple Mac computers or for PC Windows computers. Repeat these steps for each font/typeface.
2. Open the BigFixSSA application on your UW–Madison work computer. While in the “Catalog” tab, look for and click the “Install new UW brand fonts (Red Hat Display & Red Hat Text)” item. Then click the “Get” button. This should only take a few minutes. You may need to restart your computer after the installation to see the fonts reflected in programs such as Microsoft Word and Adobe InDesign.
**Important change to recommended font downloads**
Our initial download links and instructions included both the static and variable versions of the Red Hat fonts. After further testing, we have found the support for variable fonts to be inconsistent, particularly for PC Windows users. For this reason, we now recommend downloading only the static versions of Red Hat Text and Red Hat Display for use in desktop applications. (The instructions above, including the BigFix offering, have been updated to include static versions only.)
If you have already downloaded the variable fonts and are not on a DoIT/AIMS-managed computer, please follow these instructions to install the static versions only:
- Navigate to your Font Book (if you’re on a Mac) or C:\Windows\Fonts folder (if you’re on a PC).
- Find the Red Hat Display and Red Hat Text fonts and delete them.
- Download the fonts from these zip files: Red Hat Text static and Red Hat Display static.
- Install those fonts following the Mac instructions here, or the PC instructions here.
Please let us know if you encounter any issues with this process by emailing us at brand.strategiccommunication@wisc.edu. If you find that you need admin permissions during the installation process, please reach out to your IT staff or the DoIT Help Desk for assistance.
Note that web fonts are not impacted by this updated recommendation.