MonoLisa

font follows function

As software developers, we always strive for better tools but rarely consider a font as such. Yet we spend most of our days looking at screens reading and writing code. Using a wrong font can negatively impact our productivity and lead to bugs. MonoLisa was designed by professionals to improve developers’ productivity and reduce fatigue.

What Developers Say

Gant Laborde
Gant LabordeCIO at Infinite Red

As a consultant, an instructor, and a presenter, having a clean and engaging mono font is paramount, and MonoLisa delivers information perfectly to everyone without forgetting to sneak in some personality in a gentle smile.

Kyle Welch
Kyle WelchSenior Software Developer at Eventbrite

MonoLisa is now my go to font for all places. It has become my expectation in my terminal and code to the point that seeing other fonts confuses me. From the well designed and unique characters make it simple to parse and read throughout the day.

Horacio Herrera
Horacio HerreraIndependent consultant

This font is so sharp that the readability of my code increased a lot! Definitely a font I will use for a long time.

Max Stoiber
Max StoiberFrontend Developer at Gatsby

I love it ♥️

Mark Dalgleish
Mark DalgleishDeveloper at SEEK

I’ve been using MonoLisa as my editor font for the past few months. After a small adjustment period, I really grew to love it. Going back to any of my old font choices feels like a downgrade in comparison.

David Khourshid
David KhourshidSoftware developer at Microsoft

I’ve been using this font for months, and while the slightly wider nature of this font took a little getting used to at first, it eventually grew on me and I saw how well this font works with my daily workflow. A great, quality font and I highly recommend it!

Sara Vieira
Sara VieiraEngineer at CodeSandbox

As someone with an eye condition this font makes my life way easier. And not just in coding but even in design since it doesn’t only carry regular but the whole set of weights so you can even use it in design, logos or anything a monospace font makes sense.

Cassidy Williams
Cassidy WilliamsCTO at Contenda

I switched to MonoLisa after trying out several different fonts in my terminal and in my IDE. As a coding instructor and speaker (and just someone who codes a lot in her free time), readability is always the most important thing to me in a font.

Kent C. Dodds
Kent C. DoddsMaking people's lives better with software

I’m not much of a font guy, but after using this font for just a few days it’s grown on my and I really like it. (And people wasted no time in constantly asking me what font I use). Two thumbs up 👍👍

Dominik Sumer
Dominik SumerCo-Founder of seriouscode.io

Love the aesthetics of the font and how it improves code readability. That’s why we’ve also decided to use it as the default font at snappify.io

Michał Popek
Michał PopekFrontend Developer

I had been struggling with some vision issues before and MonoLisa really helped me a lot by taking a lot of strain off my eyes.

Caleb Porzio
Caleb PorzioCreator of Alpine.js

MonoLisa is the perfect coding font IMO. Spacious, stylish, and super readable. I never pictured myself having such strong feelings about a font, yet here we are.

Features

Designing a monospace font is much harder than a traditional, proportional one: being constrained by the same width of all glyphs can result in a boring or unreadable font.

MonoLisa features a few unique techniques that increase the legibility and make it visually pleasant to look at for longer periods of time.

Increased width

Increased character width helped us designing a typeface with more natural, open forms. The shapes are more relaxed creating less eye strain over long periods of time.

Wide

MonoLisa is ~7% wider compared to other monospaced fonts.

Distinction

Distinction is critical for a good coding font since it reduces ambiguity and helps avoid mistakes that can lead to software bugs.

MonoLisa has a set of glyphs that fit together but at the same time are distinct enough so you can tell them apart.

db
Distinct lower case connections
CG
Different terminals of capitals
Il1
Similar characters look different
0OØ
Zero, capital O and Ø

Space

Monospaced fonts tend to have unevenly distributed dark and light space when compared to regular typefaces. MonoLisa carefully compensates the issue by using unique letter shapes to maintain the balance.

Watermelon

Reading Flow

MonoLisa uses open forms and terminals (starting and ending points) that are pointing towards the neighboring letters to let the eye follow the line of text fluently.

acefls

Italics

The italics of MonoLisa are not simply slanted versions of the upright font. Some clearly differently constructed glyphs make the difference.

a
e
f
g
i
y

Script Plus

If simple italics are not enough, there is a script version available.

Italics style

The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog and runs away.

Coding Ligatures

MonoLisa comes with over 120 specially designed coding ligatures. A ligature is a special symbol that combines two or more characters together so it looks like one token. Ligatures help reduce visual noise and balance white space by aligning special symbols appropriately.

++a>=b%%0!=c~~>d
<!--Comment-->
<>###Title...</>
??e:=f=>{|1,2,3|}

Symbols

MonoLisa was designed with developers in mind. It’s one of the few fonts that comes packed with symbols to use in CLIs including PowerLine. Check out the specimen to see all the symbols.

U+2387
U+238B
U+2327
U+232B
U+2326
U+23CF
U+2328
U+2325
U+2318
U+23CE
U+23FB
U+23FC
U+23FD
U+23FE
U+2212
U+2260
U+2265
U+2264
U+2248
U+2205
U+221E
U+222B
U+220F
U+2211
U+221A
U+2202
U+E0A0
U+E0A1
U+E0A2
U+E0B0
U+E0B1
U+E0B2
U+E0B3
U+EE00
U+EE01
U+EE02
U+EE03
U+EE04
U+EE05
U+EE10
U+EE11
U+EE12
U+EE13
U+EE14
U+EE15

OpenType Features

MonoLisa includes many OpenType features to enable great customization for the most demanding aesthetes.

OpenType features have great support in professional graphic software. Unfortunately, they are still not available in most text editors. To make MonoLisa work in all environments, we allow you to pick the features you want to use in just a few clicks. Check out Playground to see all the features in action.

whitespace ligatures

{|{|

fractions

1/21/2

coding ligatures

!=!=

old style numbers

3636

normal asterisk

**

subscript

H2OH2O

superscript

m2m2

slashed zero

00

script variant

Plus
ff

alt g

Plus
ggg

alt sharp s

Plus
ßß

alt at

Plus
@@@

alt curly bracket

Plus
{}{}

alt parenthesis

Plus
()()

alt greater equal

Plus
>=>=>=

hexadecimal x

Plus
0xF0xF

thin backslash

Plus
\\\\

alt dollar

Plus
$$

alt &

Plus
&&

i without serif

Plus
ii

r without serif

Plus
rr

alt .= and ..=

Plus
.=.=

Variable

MonoLisa ships with variable font weight, so it’s a perfect match to use on the web. Access all weights without making your visitors download megabytes of data.

weight == 400

Languages

MonoLisa supports over 200 languages and different alphabets including latin, cyrillic, greek, and vietnamese.

FrançaisУкраїнськаΕλληνικάTiếng Việt

The Team

Marcus Sterz
Marcus SterzTypeface Designer
Juho Vepsäläinen
Juho VepsäläinenExpertise, Marketing
Andrey Okonetchnikov
Andrey OkonetchnikovExpertise, Website

MonoLisa is designed by Marcus Sterz, a professional typeface designer and co-founder of FaceType foundry, in collaboration with software developers Andrey Okonetchnikov and Juho Vepsäläinen who contributed their vast expertise in programming.

The result of this collaboration is an award-winning coding font created by professionals for professionals.

What Developers Say

Gant Laborde
Gant LabordeCIO at Infinite Red

As a consultant, an instructor, and a presenter, having a clean and engaging mono font is paramount, and MonoLisa delivers information perfectly to everyone without forgetting to sneak in some personality in a gentle smile.

Kyle Welch
Kyle WelchSenior Software Developer at Eventbrite

MonoLisa is now my go to font for all places. It has become my expectation in my terminal and code to the point that seeing other fonts confuses me. From the well designed and unique characters make it simple to parse and read throughout the day.

Horacio Herrera
Horacio HerreraIndependent consultant

This font is so sharp that the readability of my code increased a lot! Definitely a font I will use for a long time.

Max Stoiber
Max StoiberFrontend Developer at Gatsby

I love it ♥️

Mark Dalgleish
Mark DalgleishDeveloper at SEEK

I’ve been using MonoLisa as my editor font for the past few months. After a small adjustment period, I really grew to love it. Going back to any of my old font choices feels like a downgrade in comparison.

David Khourshid
David KhourshidSoftware developer at Microsoft

I’ve been using this font for months, and while the slightly wider nature of this font took a little getting used to at first, it eventually grew on me and I saw how well this font works with my daily workflow. A great, quality font and I highly recommend it!

Sara Vieira
Sara VieiraEngineer at CodeSandbox

As someone with an eye condition this font makes my life way easier. And not just in coding but even in design since it doesn’t only carry regular but the whole set of weights so you can even use it in design, logos or anything a monospace font makes sense.

Cassidy Williams
Cassidy WilliamsCTO at Contenda

I switched to MonoLisa after trying out several different fonts in my terminal and in my IDE. As a coding instructor and speaker (and just someone who codes a lot in her free time), readability is always the most important thing to me in a font.

Kent C. Dodds
Kent C. DoddsMaking people's lives better with software

I’m not much of a font guy, but after using this font for just a few days it’s grown on my and I really like it. (And people wasted no time in constantly asking me what font I use). Two thumbs up 👍👍

Dominik Sumer
Dominik SumerCo-Founder of seriouscode.io

Love the aesthetics of the font and how it improves code readability. That’s why we’ve also decided to use it as the default font at snappify.io

Michał Popek
Michał PopekFrontend Developer

I had been struggling with some vision issues before and MonoLisa really helped me a lot by taking a lot of strain off my eyes.

Caleb Porzio
Caleb PorzioCreator of Alpine.js

MonoLisa is the perfect coding font IMO. Spacious, stylish, and super readable. I never pictured myself having such strong feelings about a font, yet here we are.