Google Fonts Guide

Description file

🦉 DESCRIPTION.en_us.html contains the information that appears in the #About section on any specimen page of Google Fonts in order to give further information about the font family. This file will be created by the team member who will be onboarding the font. Thus the actual file a designer should write carefully would be the README.md file as the information provided in it is crucial to building a good About section.

Requirements
Example
- Without localised text
- With localised text

Requirements

The text length should be around 500 words, and more than 100 characters.
Allowed HTML elements: a, em, i, strong, b, p, ol, ul, li.
Other HTML elements, especially inline CSS, classes, or attributes, are not allowed and will be removed by the catalogue web app.
All links in it must be properly working.
It must include a hypertext link to the upstream repository — where the font project files are made available (designer’s GitHub repository). You can copy the following line, and copy it at the bottom of the description file (don’t forget to adjust the URL):

To contribute, see <a href="https://github.com/owner/fontname">github.com/owner/fontname</a>

Text should be updated when the font is upgraded to let people know what changed.

Example:

This font was upgraded in July 2021 to expand language coverage. It is now supporting Greek and Cyrillic.
We only accept .en_us extension, but you can definitely add a translation to the description in the case when the font is primarily targeting an audience reading a non-latin script.

See Zen+Antique#about as an example, provided by this file DESCRIPTION.en_us.html.

Example

Without localised text

See Space+Grotesk#about provided by DESCRIPTION.en_us.html as an example: it gives plenty of links (mini-website, original authors, referenced font published in GF), and follows all requirements.

Html snippet

<p>Space Grotesk is a proportional sans-serif typeface variant based on <a href="https://www.colophon-foundry.org">Colophon Foundry's</a> fixed-width <a href="https://fonts.google.com/specimen/Space+Mono">Space Mono</a> family (2016). 
Originally designed by <a href="https://fonts.floriankarsten.com">Florian Karsten</a> in 2018, Space Grotesk retains the monospace's idiosyncratic details while optimizing for improved readability at non-display sizes.</p>

<p><a href=https://floriankarsten.github.io/space-grotesk/><b>→ floriankarsten.github.io/space-grotesk</b><a><p>

<p>Space Grotesk includes Latin Vietnamese, Pinyin, and all Western, Central, and South-Eastern European language support, as well as several OpenType features (old-style and tabular figures, superscript and subscript numerals, fractions, stylistic alternates).</p>

<p>To contribute, see <a href="https://github.com/floriankarsten/space-grotesk" target="_blank">github.com/floriankarsten/space-grotesk</a>.</p>

Result on Google Fonts

About Space Grotesk

Space Grotesk is a proportional sans-serif typeface variant based on Colophon Foundry’s fixed-width Space Mono family (2016). Originally designed by Florian Karsten in 2018, Space Grotesk retains the monospace’s idiosyncratic details while optimizing for improved readability at non-display sizes.

→ floriankarsten.github.io/space-grotesk

Space Grotesk includes Latin Vietnamese, Pinyin, and all Western, Central, and South-Eastern European language support, as well as several OpenType features (old-style and tabular figures, superscript and subscript numerals, fractions, stylistic alternates).

To contribute, see github.com/floriankarsten/space-grotesk.

With localised text

If the “first” script of your font is not Latin, we strongly recommend you to also provide a translation of the description using the actual main script. This localised text must be in the same html snippet as the english text.