Poplar Font

Barbara Lind designed Adobe’s Poplar in 1990 for its Wood Type series. Adobe traces the model to William Leavenworth’s 1830 specimen, using photographs by Roy Kelly. The digital design therefore interprets an earlier wood-type source rather than originating that nineteenth-century lettering.

Read the publisher’s family page for the source account and the edition currently offered. Keep a family name distinct from its particular release, width or optical branch.

Poplar is a condensed gothic display design with narrow interior spaces. Its tall, dense shapes can create a compact block of headline lettering. Check those small counters carefully when reducing size or using a printing process that fills fine spaces.

Use the original publisher specimen to inspect those features. An alternative can share a broad role without having the same letter shapes, metrics or character coverage.

Try a two-line poster heading in the same width as a short event description. Adjust the headline size before tracking it widely, and leave a clear margin around the dense lettering. Use a more open text face for the practical details.

For independent comparisons, try Anton and Six Caps. Use the same wording and approximate output size. The related style guide provides broader design context.

Use Adobe Originals to try the original and investigate the files, styles and terms for your intended workflow. This site does not distribute or serve Poplar font software.

The editable alternatives here have their own source profiles and included licenses. For the difference between a font file and copied characters, read Unicode text versus fonts.