Sans Gender is inspired by the Women’s Rights Movement of the 1920’s in the UK. Each glyph has been crafted to reference the posters from that era. More than a typeface though, Sans Gender changes the way we see typefaces. The code behind Sans Gender transforms any font into a tool for change by seamlessly swapping gendered terms for inclusive ones, as the user is typing. Sans Gender literally removes unconscious gender bias from the cultural content that is being created, as it is being created.

In a world where gender equality is increasingly falling off the agenda due to right-wing politics, disinformation and a cacophony of issues, the need for ways to address gender bias is needed more than ever. The UN predicts that true gender equality is still 300 years away and may not ever be achieved if current trends continue. Language and written culture plays a big part in how we form our views of the world. Sans Gender seeks to tackle that head on and intercept unconscious bias at the point at which it’s being written. Sans Gender has been created as an opensource tool that we are offering for any brand, company, type foundry and user to implement into their existing or new typefaces. One brand alone cannot own Sans Gender if we want to make the difference that is needed.

Gender inequality is increasingly being attributed to poor mental health in women across the world. Inequality contributes to increased stress, low self-esteem and feelings of isolation. We know that mental health is a public health crisis and that it can reduce the life expectancy of individuals. But increasingly gender equality is seen as a done deal and is falling off the agenda of companies and governments.

An internal team wanted to draw attention to this and formed an initiative, backed by the business, to develop a tool that creates attention while also offering practical solutions to the broader issue of unconscious bias.

We wanted to create a tool that intercepts that bias at the point at which it enters the world, the written word. So we set out to create a typeface that challenges us to think about our bias while helping to remove it as the user types.

Sans Gender is a sans serif typeface inspired by the suffragette movement. It is a family that consists of 8 weight – thin through to extrabold and has a full set of glyphs.

The magic though is in the code that sits within the opentype functionality of the font’s glyphs. By identifying over 100 gendered terms and hard coding them into the typeface, Sans Gender is able to pick up on a gendered term as it is being typed and seamlessy swap it through a pre-rendered glyph.

We have released the code for anyone to use. Our aim is for ant brand, company, designer to adopt a sans gender version of their brand font, existing typeface or any new fonts that get created in the future. So that we can remove unconscious bias from any written culture.