Andika Regular, phase three of the Andika literacy font project

Andika font sample(July 2011) SIL’s Non-Roman Script Initiative (NRSI) is pleased to announce the release of the Andika Regular font. Andika is a sans serif, Unicode-compliant font designed especially for literacy use, taking into account the needs of beginning readers. The focus is on clear, easy-to-perceive letterforms that will not be readily confused with one another. Since Andika alternate charactersreadability is a major goal, NRSI has fine-tuned how Andika looks in low-resolution environments (screens, web browsers, other devices).

In the five years since the release of the first Design Review font, NRSI has been receiving feedback from users and refining Andika accordingly. With this release, NRSI brings Andika up to the same character repertoire as Charis SIL and Doulos SIL (Gentium Plus has the same Latin and Cyrillic character repertoire, along with complete Greek support). Slight modifications have been made to the design of all the a-based and r-based characters. In addition to including all the features in Charis SIL and Doulos SIL, Andika has special alternate glyphs designed for new readers. These include:

  • Digit Zero with slash
  • Digit One without base
  • Digit Four with open top
  • Digit Six and Nine alternates
  • Digit Seven with bar
  • Small i-tail alternate
  • Small j-serif alternate
  • Small l-tail alternate
  • Small q-tail alternate
  • Capital Q alternate
  • Small t-tail alternate
  • Small y-tail alternate


All of these features are extensively documented on the Andika website, where the font is available for free download. It can also be used with NRSI’s TypeTuner to create fonts with custom sets of default features.

NRSI is glad to receive user feedback for continued improvement of Andika and its other fonts.

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