Playpen Sans

Playpen Sans is one of the font families produced by TypeTogether after more than two years of primary research into handwriting education for Latin-based languages. It has seven automatic alternates for each character and a built-in shuffler that both ensures variation and avoids repetitive shapes in close proximity. This feature adds to the overall organic, spontaneous, and authentic feel of the handwritten style.

Playpen Sans is a variable font with a weight range from Thin to Extrabold, including support for over 150 Latin-based languages and a set of reward emojis. The emojis help parents and primary school teachers encourage and motivate young children, adding a playful and engaging element to the font family.

How to access emojis

The emojis in Playpen Sans show up autmatically upon entering the standard emoji. For example to get the Sun wink, introduce the standard winking face. Find below a full list of the standard emojis for to get the ones included in the font.

glyph name	uni	standard emoji
shootingStar	1F320	🌠
birthdayCake	1F382	🎂
artistPalette	1F3A8	🎨
whiteUpBackhandIndex	1F446	👆
thumbsUpSign	1F44D	👍
thumbsDownSign	1F44E	👎
openBook	1F4D6	📖
cheeringMegaphone	1F4E3	📣
lowBattery	1FAAB	🪫
unicornFace	1F984	🦄
jigsawPuzzlePiece	1F9E9	🧩
ringedPlanet	1FA90	🪐
pencil	270F	✏
checkmark	2705	✅
crossMark	274C	❌
directHit	1F3AF	🎯
dinosaur	1F996	🦖
homework	1F3E0	🏠
paperplane	2708	✈︎
pencilbook	270D	✍️
sportsMedal	1F3C5	🏅
sunFace	1F31E	🌞
suninlove	1F60D	😍
sunpirate	2620	☠️
sunsad	2639	☹️
sunwink	1F609	😉

Build instructions

Playpen Sans fonts are built using gftools and glyphspkg.

Create a virtual environment

In order to build the fonts you will need to do the following steps:

# Move to the folder you want the repository in:
cd your/repositories/folder
# Clone the repository:
git clone https://github.com/TypeTogether/Playpen-Sans.git
# Move to the repository folder:
cd your/repositories/folder/Playpen-Sans
# Create a virtual environment named "env":
python3 -m venv env
# Activate your virtual environment
source env/bin/activate
# Upgrade pip before installing packages:
pip install --upgrade pip
# Install the needed Python packages:
pip install -r requirements.txt

Now you should be ready for building the fonts.

Build fonts

Static fonts (otf, ttf, webfonts)

cd sources
sh build-static.sh

Variable font (ttf, woff2)

cd sources
sh build-var.sh

All at once (static + variable)

cd sources
sh build-all.sh

Source file

The Playpen Sans source file is in Glyphs ".glyphspackage" format (which is more git-friendly than ".glyphs").

Version 1.002

First release of Playpen Sans.

License

Licensed under the SIL Open Font License (v1.1)