Campuswide use of Verlag and Vitesse has become unsustainable due to the high cost of the paid licenses. By contrast, the UW’s new feature brand fonts — Red Hat Display and Red Hat Text — are open source and therefore free to use and distribute.
These new fonts are covered by the Open Font License and Apache License, version 2.0, which grant irrevocable rights to use of the fonts for free in perpetuity as long as the user adheres to the terms of the license. In other words, we can distribute the fonts to everyone across campus, and there will never be any cost to use the fonts.
University Marketing (now the Office of Strategic Communication), selected Red Hat Display and Red Hat Text after a monthslong process to identify and test suitable replacement fonts. Considerations included: universal access (free with open-source license), wide flexibility across print and digital uses (including variable font styles and true italics), display quality (such as consistent height of numerals), and visual distinctiveness to carry the UW brand and capture its personality.
We believe these new fonts will not only suitably replace Verlag and Vitesse — and for free — but also allow for more flexible uses and expressive designs.