rom the outset, Pangea included European Latin, Greek, Extended Cyrillic (including overlooked languages such as Kyrgyz or Bashkir) and Vietnamese as well as characters for the transcription of Arabic and Sanskrit. The next language extension milestones planned are Hebrew and Arabic (Persian, Urdu, Dari as well as Pashto).

Designer Christoph Koeberlin sees Pangea as an inclusive typeface family. Its name refers to his approach of considering different cultures and continents as part of a common whole. His continuous language extensions challenge Western conventions, as more often than not successful typefaces usually only represent the alphabets of Europe and America. Pangea Afrikan marks an important milestone in this respect: it adds Latin African to its language toolbox. Providing support for languages including Hausa, Yoruba, Igbo, Lingala, Mende, and Umbundu, as well as some indigenous North American languages such as Lushootseed and Navajo–the languages of over 430 million people.

Fontwerk’s mission is to make typography affordable and accessible to all. We don’t want to make extensive language support like Cyrillic, Greek or Arabic an expensive additional barrier or obstacle to great typography. With this comprehensive update, we even go one big step further based on Christoph’s suggestion: Pangea Afrikan is permanently free of charge and included in the Base License! We hope that brands, agencies and individual designers will be able to benefit from this.

Stylistically, the extension remains true to the tried and tested Pangea formula: the space-saving compactness of the narrow typefaces of the mid-20th Century is transferred to a straightforward, geometric sans serif. That means a stately x-height, ascenders that correspond to the capital letters, and letters that are hardly open. The font owes its finely balanced lightness to diagonal ends and round dots. With two optical sizes, Pangea Afrikan and Pangea Afrikan Text, something that is rather rare in the geometric genre, users get enormous flexibility and design consequence.

This update does not however, mean the end of the language extension. Together with local designers, additional Non-Latin alphabets such as N’Ko or Geʽez are in the works. These will also be available to existing and future customers at no cost. Until then, however, a little patience is required and it is important to trust the Tanzanian proverb ‘Haraka Haraka haina baraka’ (Hurry hurry has no blessings).

Download Pangea Afrikan free of charge

Further information

In his blog, Christoph describes the genesis of this project in more detail and makes suggestions for a Latin character set that goes beyond the borders of Europe and the Americas.

Download Pangea Afrikan free of charge