Font Friday

BioRhyme (free font)

The typeface BioRhyme on a mobile phone in a headline, body text, a pull quote and the labels of a button and navigation

Slab-Serif Typeface

by Aoife Mooney on Google Fonts

10 Styles

2 widths: Normal and Expanded
5 weights: Extra-Light to Extra-Bold

License

Free

Best for

  • Headings (display text)
  • Long reading text (body text)
  • User Interfaces (functional text)

Specialty

OpenType Features and alternates, crazily wide expanded style.

My thoughts on BioRhyme

BioRhyme is a very lively, warm and approachable slab-serif in two widths, normal and expanded. It is designed by Aoife Mooney and available on Google Fonts. The short ascenders and descenders let BioRhyme appear very compact. It comes with a lot of OpenType features and variety of alternates, giving you the option to make it more playful or straight. This playful typeface works for display text very well. For body text it needs more space, even in the normal width and might be too wide and tiring for very long reading text. For UIs and functional text it needs too much space and is far too dense.

On top some alternates, like a single-story and a two-story a and g. Below how BioRhyme Expanded Light looks in uppercase letters only and in mixed case letters, Extra-Bold.

The Expanded style is carried to the extreme, almost as if it was squidged. I really like how expressive it is and love the uppercase letters in that extreme width with their striking serifs, it almost seems monospaced. On a screen, especially on mobile, BioRhyme Expanded will use up too much space. For desktop usage, the headings might look good. Maybe you could add a breakpoint to switch from the normal width to expanded there?

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