TIKTOK SANS

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At TikTok, creativity thrives at the intersection of storytelling, self-expression, and community. With TikTok Sans, our new bespoke typeface, we set out to design a visual voice that reflects the diverse energy of our global creators, visionaries, and storytellers. We engaged and worked closely with Grilli Type to build out and design the typeface that would appear across our app and all future marketing assets. In the launch video I created below you can see a dive into how this typeface helps us reinforce the impact of our creators and users alike in a fresh way across all of our platforms.

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The process of designing TikTok Sans was driven by the need to create a typeface that was both uniquely ownable and functionally versatile across the brand’s ecosystem. The goal was to elevate TikTok’s visual identity while reducing long-term licensing costs by developing a fully custom typeface. Over six months, the team designed two distinct typefaces: an interface typeface optimized for readability within the app and a display typeface for marketing and branding. This process also involved redrawing the TikTok logo and subbrands to align seamlessly with the new typography, ensuring brand cohesion across product, content, and communications.

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The decision to develop a proprietary font stemmed from limitations with previous typefaces we were lisencing to use across our various touchpo9ints fromt he app to televisions and while Proxima Nova and Sofia Pro were functional, they lacked uniqueness, were widely used by other brands, and incurred high licensing costs. By creating a bespoke type system, TikTok achieved a distinct, scalable, and cohesive visual language that strengthens its identity across all touchpoints.

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In an app where new terminology is constantly invented, it only made sense to turn to the brand’s vocabulary to set the design tone for the project. This presented the opportunity to take a departure from the original typefaces present in the app and match it more closely with the energy of its creators. TikTok Sans represents our commitment to meaningful innovation, as we continuously aim to improve the user experience by optimizing legibility and reading retention, along with providing multi-language font support for our global community.

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TikTok Sans is what we like to refer to as a Geometric Grotesque typeface that blends the precision of geometric shapes with the approachable functionality of grotesque designs. Positioned between Helvetica's utilitarian balance and Futura's modern minimalism, TikTok Sans is uniquely crafted to embody TikTok’s dynamic brand identity. Grotesques are known for their balanced, utilitarian design with slight quirks, such as uneven stroke widths or subtle inconsistencies in letterforms.

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These characteristics lend them a humanistic and functional feel, making them widely used for both body text and display purposes. Geometric sans-serifs are constructed based on pure geometric shapes, such as perfect circles and straight lines. This results in a clean, minimalistic appearance, often perceived as modern but less forgiving for readability at small sizes due to their strict geometry.

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The process of naming TikTok Sans was deeply tied to the platform’s identity—playful, dynamic, and creator-driven. The goal was to develop a name that felt distinct yet intuitive, aligning with TikTok’s mission of inspiring creativity and bringing joy. Early name explorations included terms reflecting content creation, social virality, and community engagement, such as Create, Connect, Vyral, For You, and Talk Sans.

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The team aimed for a name that was simple, memorable, and globally consistent, ensuring clarity for all users while avoiding unnecessary complexity in UI surfaces. The guiding principles focused on raw, fresh, and dynamic qualities that captured the essence of TikTok’s brand and its role as a global creative platform.

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The naming process followed a structured approach, beginning with open brainstorming and a broad list of potential names. After the initial exploration, the team voted to narrow down the strongest contenders, selecting names that resonated with TikTok’s identity and typographic intent.

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Shortlisted names were then evaluated through localization and external trademark reviews to ensure they were legally viable and culturally appropriate for TikTok’s vast global audience. Considerations included phonetic clarity, ease of localization, and brand alignment, avoiding any unintended negative connotations or confusing interpretations.

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A key challenge was balancing uniqueness with brand cohesion. While some initial ideas and options, like TKTK, offered a clever nod to typography and publishing placeholders, concerns over pronunciation and clarity led the team to seek something more universally recognizable. Similarly, the name "Vyral" encapsulated the idea of content spreading rapidly but carried associations with "viruses," making it a less ideal fit.

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Ultimately, the team opted for "TikTok Sans", a straightforward yet brand-rooted name that clearly communicated its purpose as the platform’s official typeface. While it lacked the creative flair of some other suggestions, it provided the strongest brand recognition and usability, ensuring that TikTok’s type system remained instantly identifiable and cohesive across all products and touchpoints.

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This methodical approach—grounded in creative exploration, brand strategy, and linguistic precision—not only resulted in a functional and recognizable typeface name but also reinforced TikTok's commitment to design excellence. The process reflects TikTok’s broader approach to branding: a balance between user-friendly simplicity and expressive, culture-driven identity, ensuring that TikTok Sans remains a core element of the brand’s visual language for years to come.

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TikTok Sans brings clearer strokes, larger openings, and improved readability, making text more legible across different devices and screen sizes. Compared to Proxima Nova, the new typeface is slightly larger, with an increased line height to improve text clarity, particularly on mobile screens. We wanted to ensure that as the app expanded onto new screens that we could evolve it to fit new needs.

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The TikTok Sans typeface development involved a rigorous RFP (Request for Proposal) process, where multiple top-tier type foundries were evaluated to design a custom font that would enhance TikTok’s brand identity, improve product consistency, and reduce long-term licensing costs. The goal was to find a partner who could deliver a unique, scalable, and high-performing typeface that worked seamlessly across interface, branding, and marketing applications while accommodating TikTok’s global audience and multilingual needs. Agencies were assessed based on their ability to meet technical, creative, and scalability requirements, with a strong emphasis on optimizing readability, supporting diverse scripts, and ensuring flexibility across different platforms, including mobile, web, and video content.

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The RFP process was highly structured and timeline-driven, starting with agency outreach, NDA execution, and procurement approvals, followed by clarification calls, proposal evaluations, and agency presentations. The evaluation criteria included creative flexibility, technical expertise, and past work with high-profile brands. Some agencies, such as Dalton Maag, Grilli Type, ABCDinamo, and Colophon, proposed variable font technology for improved rendering across dark and light modes, while others focused on regional language support and cost-effective scalability. Key challenges included balancing expressiveness with functionality, ensuring A/B testing for performance impact, streamlining data visualization and numerals across UI platforms, and planning for future script expansions beyond the initial Latin character set.

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Throughout the process, the scoring committee worked closely with procurement teams and product stakeholders to shortlist agencies based on their proposals, presentation insights, and expertise in font engineering. Agencies like Grilli Type and Dalton Maag were particularly strong in their approach to hinting optimization for low-end devices, while ABCDinamo emphasized the importance of a recognizable and expressive typeface that embodies TikTok’s dynamic personality. Considerations around brand distinctiveness, usability, and long-term scalability played a crucial role in decision-making, as TikTok sought a font that would remain timeless yet adaptable to evolving brand and platform needs.

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Ultimately, the final selection balanced technical precision with creative expression, ensuring that TikTok Sans would serve as a bold, cohesive, and scalable identity for TikTok across all digital touchpoints. The meticulous agency selection and development process reinforced TikTok’s commitment to design excellence and brand innovation, resulting in a typeface that is playful yet functional, expressive yet readable, and distinctly TikTok.

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Collaborating closely with the winner of our RFP process, Grilli Type, a world-renowned type foundry, I had the opportunity to play a key role in bringing this project to life from our TikTok for Business side along with Crystal Yin and Hamilton Tamayo on our design team. TikTok Sans balances personality with versatility—it’s bold yet approachable, modern yet timeless—mirroring the dynamic essence of our platform.

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The goal was to create a custom typeface that addressed both product and marketing needs, ensuring legibility across platforms such as iOS, Android, Web, TV, social media, and outdoor advertising. The typeface needed to be flexible enough for technical optimization while remaining expressive for branding, with a strong focus on multi-language support, proportional typesetting, and improved readability across interfaces.

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From our roots in entertainment to our mission of fostering inclusivity and self-expression, TikTok Sans complements and elevates the unique experiences our community creates, shares, and discovers every day. By seamlessly enhancing our brand’s visual language across in-app, web, and creative assets, this typeface reaffirms our commitment to empowering creative self-expression on a global scale.

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TikTok Sans serves various functions for communicating TikTok messaging through its different font weights. The project was structured into three phases over a 22-week timeline: Concept, Design, and Production. The Concept Phase (Weeks 1–6) involved creative exploration and defining the design direction. The Design Phase (Weeks 6–16) focused on refining the typeface, expanding character sets, and testing early versions to ensure performance. The final Production Phase (Weeks 16–22) included finalizing font weights, spacing, kerning, and mastering for seamless deployment.

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The deliverables included .OTF files for desktop, .WOFF and .TTF for web, and an unlimited global usage license covering desktop, web, app, and broadcast applications. To improve readability and usability, the typeface introduced custom stylistic features, OpenType (OT) enhancements, and an expression gauge for variable font adaptation. Additionally, TikTok Sans replaced conflicting fonts in the web and mobile ecosystem, optimized typography for video readability, and improved performance on low-end devices. TikTok Sans is divided into two subfamilies: Brand, for all of their brand and marketing needs, and Text, optimized for the user interface. The design is expressed across four axes as a variable font: weight, optical size, upright to oblique, and a dark mode axis.

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Since TikTok thrives on mobile, every aspect of TikTok Sans was crafted with small screens in mind. The typeface had to be space-efficient yet effortlessly readable, ensuring text remains clear and engaging within the compact UI. To achieve this, the Text version features slim, well-spaced letterforms, striking a balance between legibility and economy. This allows for a clean, structured interface without overwhelming the limited screen real estate, making sure content feels crisp and accessible at a glance.

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To further enhance readability, the Text subfamily was fine-tuned with a tall x-height and optical refinements, making in-app text feel fluid and approachable. The optical size axis plays a key role here, dynamically adapting the typeface based on context and screen size. This intelligent typography ensures that TikTok Sans remains sharp, scalable, and effortlessly readable—whether it’s a tiny caption or a bold headline, it delivers a seamless experience tailored for the mobile generation.

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As these assets were delivered by Grilli our TikTok For Business design team collaborated with Raisa on our user side to provide feedback on how to utilize these across regions and feel true to many of the features of the platform. We built a comprehensive set of usage guidelines and helped produce launch content as we rolled it out across different mediums.

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TikTok Sans spans a full weight spectrum from Light to Black, offering versatility across different moods and expressions. The optical size axis fine-tunes smaller text for clarity, while allowing larger typography to be bold and dynamic—automatically adjusting to ensure the perfect balance. Whether for tight UI layouts or eye-catching headlines, the typeface adapts effortlessly to the scale and purpose of the design.

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Beyond static text, upright styles fluidly transition into slanted counterparts, unlocking motion-friendly possibilities for animated marketing campaigns. Dark mode is also thoughtfully optimized—since light text on a dark background tends to appear visually heavier, subtle adjustments refine character weight, ensuring a seamless, visually balanced experience for late-night scrolling sessions.

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TikTok Sans Display is our primary font – its unique and modern geometric sans characteristics and curves create a dynamic feel. Perfect for communicating and capturing the energy of our brand and our users, which is used for headlines. The secondary font weight is TikTok Sans Text Regular. Its balance makes it suitable for longer instances of text and interface copy. Our bold type can convey expression and energy both in static compositions and motion.
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TikTok Sans was designed as a variable font across four axes: weight, optical size, upright to oblique, and a dark mode axis. This allows the typeface to adapt seamlessly to different scales and contexts. Starting with the Display font, we focused on embodying TikTok’s energy and identity before optimizing for smaller type sizes. The Text version was tailored for in-app readability, combining tall x-heights, narrow letterforms, and generous spacing for optimal functionality on mobile devices.

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To maintain its unique energy, there are four key principles for setting type in TikTok communications. First, all headlines and hero typography should be in sentence case and optically centered on the central axis. This maintains a clean and structured appearance while allowing for fluid readability. Sentence case follows standard grammatical rules for proper capitalization of names, places, and events. However, exceptions are made when capitalization changes the meaning of words (such as in German) or when representing cultural and linguistic nuances for heritage months, slogans, and special announcements.

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Punctuation plays a key role in shaping the tone of TikTok Sans. Headlines do not require a period at the end, keeping them crisp and energetic. However, punctuation can be strategically used when necessary to create a specific rhythm or emphasis, such as separating short sentences for impact. Additionally, when working with hashtags containing multiple words, consistent capitalization should be applied for clarity and readability. This ensures that the typography remains visually engaging without unnecessary clutter.

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To maintain a bold yet organized visual identity, a maximum of two colors should be used per headline. This guideline prevents the design from becoming overly chaotic while still allowing for vibrancy and brand expression. Additionally, leading—the space between lines—should be kept tight, at or below the height of a lowercase ‘x’ in the typeface. This compact arrangement ensures a cohesive, structured layout without causing overlapping or loss of legibility.

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Finally, TikTok Sans is meticulously kerned for balance, meaning its tracking and spacing should always remain at the default optical setting of ‘0’. This ensures consistency across different applications, keeping the type smooth and intentional in its design. These principles together define TikTok Sans as a font that is both functional and expressive, reinforcing the brand’s distinct personality while providing a strong visual foundation for all TikTok communications.

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TikTok Sans is more than just a typeface—it embodies the way language evolves on TikTok as a platform and cultural force. TikTok has reshaped the way people communicate, introducing a fast-paced, visually engaging, and highly interactive form of expression where text is as much a part of the storytelling as the video itself. From viral catchphrases and remixed slang to the rise of new internet dialects, the platform has accelerated linguistic shifts and influenced the English language in profound ways.

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Phrases like “It’s giving,” “No cap,” and “POV” to name a few have transcended digital spaces, embedding themselves into everyday conversations. The way text appears on screen—whether through subtitles, captions, or typography-driven trends—plays a crucial role in how humor, irony, and emotional nuance are conveyed. TikTok Sans was designed to capture this dynamism, ensuring that the platform’s distinct mix of playfulness and clarity is reflected in its visual identity. As a medium that thrives on user creativity and rapid cultural exchange, TikTok has blurred the lines between speech and text, making typography a key player in shaping modern digital discourse regardless of the language or region of origination.

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To support TikTok’s global audience, the typeface was designed with 576 language scripts across Latin, Cyrillic, and Greek. Each script was crafted with input from native type designers, ensuring cultural and visual harmony it supports various languages including English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, German, Italian, Indonesian, Turkish, Vietnamese to start, with plans to add more in the future.

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By marrying expressive personality with practical functionality, TikTok Sans demonstrates that even in a fast-paced app where everything is always moving, typography can be bold, memorable, and seamlessly integrated. I’m incredibly proud to have contributed to this project, ensuring TikTok’s typeface matches its ambition: to be the global home for discovery, self-expression, and joy.

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TikTok Sans combines playful, quirky details with simplified shapes to create an approachable yet tech-forward tone. Distinctive elements like the straight-lined ‘a’ terminal, the sharp descender of the ‘j,’ and the unconventional tail on the ‘Q’ give it character, while simplified shapes—like the stemless ‘u’ and spur-less ‘G’—keep it clean and functional. Recognizing TikTok’s late-night appeal, we optimized the Text subfamily for dark mode, ensuring that light-on-dark text retains perfect visual balance.

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Designed to protect and represent the diversity of our global community, our new typeface is designed with accessibility in mind, supporting numerous global scripts and equipped with an anti-spoofing safety and security features. We aim to build responsibly and remain dedicated to upholding transparency and ensuring the safety of our community and we remain committed to exploring new ways to enrich the TikTok experience, taking into account feedback from our global community.
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To refine the user experience based on real-world feedback, TikTok Sans was gradually rolled out to select creators before an official announcement. This allowed the platform to test the typeface in various content environments and optimize its performance before full implementation. With TikTok Sans now replacing all previous fonts across the platform, TikTok remains committed to ongoing improvements based on community feedback, ensuring that the typeface continues to evolve alongside the platform’s global audience and accessibility initiatives.

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When an app is part of someone's daily rhythm, even a subtle design change can feel like a shift in muscle memory—like reaching for a light switch that’s suddenly a few inches to the left. At first, it feels unfamiliar, but with time, it becomes second nature. A new typeface reshapes the visual experience, and while it may stand out at first, it’s designed to integrate seamlessly into the way people navigate and engage with the app. It took users some time to adjust to the new look and feel but over time the typeface became ubiquitous. This effort was a real call and response between our users and a robust team of internal folks from engineering to marketing to design to legal, procurement and more, this couldn't be done without the help of so many of these cross functional moving parts and it was my pleasure to be a part of this herculean effort.

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Typography isn’t just about readability—it’s a core part of a brand’s identity. TikTok Sans was created to blend expressive branding with a dynamic, personality-driven UI, proving that a typeface can be both functional and full of character. We’ve come to expect sterile, predictable interfaces, but TikTok is built on creativity—why should its typography be any less bold? TikTok’s verbal and typographic identity is bold, expressive, and deeply connected to its global community. Every word, every interaction, and every moment on the platform carries a unique energy—one that needed to be reflected in its typography. TikTok Sans was designed to embody this distinct voice, translating the brand’s dynamic, inclusive, and inventive personality into letterforms that feel uniquely TikTok.

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A major priority in the typeface’s evolution was ensuring clarity without sacrificing character. TikTok is a mobile-first platform, where text must be compact yet readable within the narrow constraints of a phone screen. The optical size axis in TikTok Sans makes this effortless, adjusting letterforms dynamically based on size and context. Whether a comment, a caption, or a bold call-to-action, the typeface adapts fluidly, making sure every word lands with impact.

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Beyond functionality, TikTok Sans had to reflect the platform’s global, expressive, and ever-evolving culture. The typeface expands multi-language support, ensuring that TikTok remains inclusive across diverse regions. The introduction of SemiBold and ExtraBold weights amplifies the brand’s expressive range, adding playfulness and emotion to its typographic voice. The slant axis further enhances this, allowing text to seamlessly shift into motion, unlocking new potential for animated content and storytelling.

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Ultimately, TikTok Sans is more than just a typeface—it’s a visual extension of how TikTok speaks. It embraces fluidity, boldness, and innovation, just like the platform itself. This evolution ensures that as TikTok grows, its typography evolves with it, keeping every word, interaction, and moment as engaging and memorable as the content it carries. TikTok Sans bridges the gap between the pragmatic and the stylized, making it adaptable to a wide variety of uses while ensuring a unique and cohesive visual voice for TikTok's global presence.

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Key Collaborators: Jinglu Li, Ryan Northway, Ye Lin, Fernando Wang, Yujie Li, Peijun Guo, Qinyi Yao, Eason Shen, Jessie Ning, Jerio, Alex Ng, Mercy Tee, Haoqi Wen, Shayna Wenger, Raisa Janjua, Julia Zhou, Ian Alexander, Johnny Chiu, Hamilton Tamayo, Crystal Yin, Chang Ma, Jialu Li, Eason Shen, Thomas Cheng, Lachlan Bradford, Guandong Li, Yunfeng He, Tiantuo You, Haoyu Wang, Jun Shen, Haohao Duan, Melon Lee, Yuhang Liu, Miaomiao Liu, Xiangyu Kong, Yixia Xu, Kristin Peak, Nilesh Patel, Belle Baldoza, Jenny Westin, Parris Pierce, Alex Polo, Mike Hinson, Joy Seet

Tools: Adobe Creative Suite,  Figma

Deliverables: Typography Brand Guidelines, Font Files, Marketing Assets

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