Google’s Noto font family now works with all languages, dead or alive

Don’t you hate it when you type something in another language and it shows up as empty squares? Those squares are known as “tofu,” and Google is saying, “No more tofu” – Noto. With the Noto typeface, Monotype and Google are introducing a font family that covers all written languages and scripts, including the dead ones.

Monotype and Google have been working on the Google Noto font for five years, and now it is one of the few – if not the only one – digital typefaces that allow you to work across all languages on any device. To be more specific, the typeface covers more than 800 languages and 100 written scripts including emojis and various symbols.

According to Monotype, they decided to work on Google Noto in order to facilitate global communications “across borders, languages and cultures.” And indeed, Google’s global font goes where no other fonts have been able to previously. For instance, Google and Monotype conducted an in-depth research into libraries of writings of the Tibetan language and worked with a Buddhist monastery to perfect Noto Tibetan.

With the Noto typeface family, Google wants to preserve our languages and cultures, even the rarely-used or dead ones:

Our goal for Noto has been to create fonts for our devices, but we’re also very interested in keeping information alive. When it comes to some of these lesser-used languages, or even the purely academic or dead languages, we think it’s really important to preserve them. Without the digital capability of Noto, it’s much more difficult to preserve that cultural resource.

Although the Noto typeface is pretty impressive as it is, Google and Monotype are far from being done, it seems. With the help of external designers and linguistic experts, the two companies are continuing to add more scripts to the font family.

The Noto font family is available for download here, if you want to give it a try!

What are your thoughts on Noto? Let us know in the comment section below!