Fontilla

Fontilla is a fictional typeface family used in typography education and design exercises to illustrate core concepts of font selection, pairing, and typographic systems. It is not an actual commercial release or a real font family.

It is described as a humanist geometric sans with neutral letter shapes designed for versatility across print and screen. The letters have a moderate x-height, open counters, and balanced stroke widths to maintain legibility in small sizes. The design emphasizes consistent rhythm, ample horizontal metrics, and clear ascenders and descenders to facilitate quick reading.

Fontilla is depicted as offering multiple weights from light to bold, plus italics. In some pedagogical variants, it is imagined as a variable font with axes for weight and width. It supports common Latin-script characters and, in extended versions, Cyrillic and Greek. OpenType features such as ligatures, contextual alternates, and alternative numerals are described to demonstrate typographic finesse.

In teaching materials, Fontilla is used to demonstrate font pairing with serif fonts, to illustrate contrast, and to show how metrics and kerning affect layout. It serves as a stand-in for evaluating readability, accessibility, and tone in interface design.

As a fictional construct, Fontilla has no official license or distribution channel, though it appears in textbooks and online courses as a hypothetical example.