Quicksand font free download: the ZIP below holds a single font file with a variable weight axis and 812 glyphs, plus the OFL licence.
Yes — Quicksand is free for commercial use, including in apps and client websites you ship
Quicksand is released under the SIL Open Font License 1.1 (OFL). You can use it in client work, logos, products you sell, apps and print, without paying and without asking permission.
Quicksand was started by Andrew Paglinawan in 2008, built from geometric shapes with rounded terminals. Thomas Jockin revised it thoroughly in 2016 to raise the quality, and Mirko Velimirovic made it variable in 2019. It is designed for display but kept legible enough to hold at small sizes — the rounded terminals soften it without blurring the letterforms.
We read the license state from the font file itself rather than from a listing. The embedding permission flag (fsType) is 0 — Installable, the least restrictive value in the OpenType specification.
Quick facts
| Designer | Andrew Paglinawan |
| Added to Google Fonts | October 2011 |
| Version | Version 3.006 |
| License | SIL Open Font License 1.1 |
| Commercial use | Yes, no attribution required |
Embedding (fsType) | 0 — Installable, unrestricted |
| Variable font | Yes — 1 axis (Weight) |
| Weights | 5 named (300 Light → 700 Bold) |
| Glyphs | 812 |
| Characters covered | 694 |
| OpenType features | 18 |
| Vietnamese support | Yes, full |
| Download size | 66 KB — 1 font file + OFL.txt |
Download Quicksand
What’s in the download
The download is a single ZIP containing 1 font file plus the licence:
| File | What it is |
|---|---|
| Quicksand[wght].ttf | Variable upright — 1 axis: Weight |
OFL.txt travels with the files — keep it in the folder if you pass the font on to anyone else. Total download 66 KB.
The download includes the OFL license file. Keep it in the package if you redistribute the font.
Pairing suggestion. Mocha Bubble+Sans on The Asset Crate — a premium duo if you want the rounded feel with a bubble display companion.
Why Quicksand and Raleway clash, and what to pair Quicksand with instead: see our Raleway font pairing guide for Canva.
Internal link to our own coverage, not an external ad.
What the OFL license actually lets you do
You can:
- Use Quicksand in commercial projects, including client work you bill for
- Use Quicksand in a logo or brand identity, and trademark that logo
- Sell products that use Quicksand — merchandise, packaging, book covers
- Embed Quicksand in websites, apps, games, PDFs and ebooks
- Modify Quicksand and redistribute your modified version
You cannot:
- Sell the font file on its own, outside a larger bundled product
- Distribute it without the OFL license file
- Release a modified version under a Reserved Font Name
No attribution is required in your design. The OFL only asks that the license file travels with the font files.
Inside the file: 812 glyphs and 694 characters
Quicksand ships 812 glyphs covering 694 Unicode codepoints.
Vietnamese, and 12 other languages in full
Tested against the full alphabets of a reference set of languages, Quicksand fully covers 13:
Vietnamese · Spanish · French · German · Portuguese · Italian · Polish · Czech · Turkish · Romanian · Hungarian · Dutch · Nordic (da/no/sv)
Vietnamese is fully supported, including stacked diacritics such as ế, ộ, ữ and ỹ — worth checking before you commit, because many free families stop at Latin Extended-A and silently drop them.
Which Unicode blocks those 694 characters cover
| Block | Covered |
|---|---|
| Basic Latin | 95 / 96 |
| Latin-1 Supplement | 96 / 96 |
| Latin Extended-A | 127 / 128 |
| Latin Extended-B | 72 / 208 |
| IPA Extensions | 2 / 96 |
| Greek | 1 / 144 |
| Latin Extended Additional | 172 / 256 |
OpenType features: 18 in the file
| Feature | What it does |
|---|---|
aalt | All alternates |
case | Case-sensitive forms |
ccmp | Glyph composition |
dlig | Discretionary ligatures |
frac | Fractions |
kern | Kerning |
liga | Standard ligatures |
locl | Localized letterforms |
mark | Diacritic positioning |
mkmk | Mark-to-mark positioning |
ordn | Ordinals |
subs | Subscript |
Plus 6 further feature tags in the file, mostly stylistic-set and script-specific tables.
Variable axes: 1
- Weight (
wght): 300 to 700, continuous
Because this is a single variable file, every intermediate value is available. One file replaces the whole static weight set, which usually means a smaller total download than shipping three or four static cuts.
A mid-range x-height (0.503) — why it works across sizes
| Metric | Value |
|---|---|
| Units per em | 1,000 |
| Ascender | 1,000 |
| Descender | -250 |
| Cap height ratio | 0.700 |
| x-height ratio | 0.503 |
An x-height ratio of 0.503 sits in the normal middle band — no strong bias toward either small-size legibility or display elegance, which is part of why it works across a range of sizes.
Right for interfaces, wrong for long reading
Good fit: Friendly branding, children’s and wellness products, packaging, app onboarding.
Poor fit: Formal, corporate or editorial contexts, where the rounded terminals read as juvenile.
Need something a free family cannot give you? Licensed families usually ship more weights, more alternates and a matched companion face:
Browse font families on Creative Market
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More free sans serif coverage
- Mocha Bubble+Sans — a premium duo if you want the rounded feel with a bubble display companion
The license state and every technical figure on this page were read directly from the Quicksand font binary — fsType embedding bits, glyph counts, character coverage, OpenType feature tables, variable-axis ranges and vertical metrics — not copied from a third-party listing. Last verified 23 August 2026 against version Version 3.006.
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