Fonts Which Cannot be Used as Primary Web Fonts

Each operating system has some proprietary fonts which are generally not licensed to be used by web designers in their website building projects. For example, Microsoft clearly announced this fact in these words. [RD]

“No, as Segoe UI is both our user interface and corporate branding font, it is not available for use outside of Microsoft products on non-Windows platforms.”

However, Microsoft advises to use open-source Selawik font, as substitute to Segoe UI, in case, you really like it.

Some of these system proprietary fonts including their variants are as following:

• Segoe UI

• San Francisco

• Google Sans

• Bahnschrift

For example, Google Fonts is a great repository of web fonts but the website does not include Google Sans font in the list, because it is their proprietary font.

However, you can adopt some other idea if you love any of above fonts. For example, you can declare them as fallback font. You can also choose some similar looking font – Open Sans for Segoe UI.

You are also not allowed to use some brand fonts such as ‘Dunkin Sans Display’ or ‘Samsung Sharp Sans’ fonts which are proprietary to the respective brands. However, some brands have created open source brand fonts which you are allowed to use on your own website such as ‘IBM Plex Sans’ font by IBM.

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