Work Sans is a typeface family based loosely on early Grotesques, such as those by Stephenson Blake, Miller & Richard and Bauerschen Giesserei. The Regular weight and others in the middle of the family are optimised for on-screen text usage at medium-sizes (14px-48px) and can also be used in print design. The fonts closer to the extreme weights are designed more for display use both on the web and in print. Overall, features are simplified and optimised for screen resolutions; for example, diacritic marks are larger than how they would be in print. A version optimised for print is available from the Work Sans github project page.

The Hairline weight is available as a separate family, Work Sans Hairline

The Work Sans project is led by Wei Huang, a type designer based in Norway. To contribute, see github.com/weiweihuanghuang/Work-Sans