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A superfamily is the collective grouping of several explicitly related type families—such as a serif, sans, and slab—that all share the same underlying structure to their design.

A large specimen showing the various weights and styles in Source Sans, Source Serif, and Source Code—i.e., the Source superfamily.

It’s common for a typeface to be made up of several variants—usually weights—and this is referred to as a “family.” When the variants are more plentiful, especially when the family includes variants across typeface genres (e.g. serif and sans), it can be referred to as a “superfamily.” Variable fonts make it possible to deploy an entire superfamily as a single font file.

Examples of superfamilies include Source (Sans, Serif, Code), IBM Plex (Sans, Sans Condensed, Serif, Mono), and Roboto (Sans, Sans Condensed, Slab, Mono).