Smashing Magazine recently published an article on High-Quality Free Fonts early this year. Among the beauties they call out, I saw Open Sans by Steve Matteson. It looks quite a bit like Segoe which seems no surprise as Steve Matteson designed them both. And with Segoe being my favorite font these days, I couldn't resist the opportunity to see how they compared.
At first glance, it's very hard to tell them apart as you can see below.
Of course we'll take a closer look. If you want get a really detailed look, I placed PDFs of my comparison files on my Skydrive
https://skydrive.live.com/redir.aspx?cid=1ff099edb1c7ebfa&resid=1FF099EDB1C7EBFA!1940&parid=1FF099EDB1C7EBFA!1925
First a Brief Overview
Key Differences
Segoe is in blue. Open sans in in red.
Capital J – Open Sans is distinguished by a J that descends. I don't see this very often on fonts.
Lowercase g – substantial differences
Number 1 – Open Sans is more like Segoe WP for this character
Most of the remaining letters *look* almost exactly the same but on closer inspection, you'll see small differences. None of them seem to be the exact same shape.
OVERALL COMMENT
- Cool and modern looking
- Nice to see that platforms that don't have access to Segoe can get something that looks like it.
- As a bonus it is available in quite a few variants. Open Sans Light looks especially nice.
GET IT HERE
You can download the fonts locally or use it as a web font via Google.