Ringside Font

Ringside was designed by Jonathan Hoefler and Sara Soskolne in 2016, according to the foundry’s design notes. It reconsiders ideas from Knockout for smaller reading sizes and was first publicly used in January 2017. Its working title, Knockout Text, describes development history rather than a separate current family to download.

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.

The publisher differentiates six widths and companion italics, alongside ScreenSmart resources for web use. Compare the drawn forms in each width rather than assuming the same outlines were stretched. A screen-oriented resource and a print-oriented resource require an exact file or package reference.

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 dense reading paragraph, a numeric table and a narrow-column heading. Choose the width before adjusting tracking and compare the italic at the intended reading size. Keep the exact resource in the project notes so later collaborators can reproduce the layout.

For independent comparisons, try Source Sans 3 and Roboto Condensed. Use the same wording and approximate output size. The related style guide provides broader design context.

Use Hoefler&Co. to try the original and investigate the files, styles and terms for your intended workflow. This site does not distribute or serve Ringside 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.