Why Spotify is launching its own font, Spotify Mix

Spotify launched its own font, the company announced on Wednesday. The music streaming service hopes that its new typeface, “Spotify Mix,” will help Spotify distinguish its own unique visual identity. 

Spotify Mix is a sans-serif typeface designed in partnership with Dinamo Typefaces, a Berlin-based type design studio that has worked with major companies, including Burberry, Discord, Nike, Patreon and Tumblr, among others. Sans-serif fonts are simpler looking than serif fonts and are popular among many brands, including tech giants Google and Microsoft. The font type is also known to be more accessible because it’s easier to read on smaller devices. 

Spotify describes the new font as a “combination of sharp angles and smooth curves,” which gives it a “distinctive character,” Spotify’s global head of brand design, Rasmus Wängelin, wrote in the blog post.

“To design this typeface, we broke free from traditional typographic constraints and merger elements from a variety of font styles. This approach mirrors the dynamic and evolving nature of audio culture over the years,” Wängelin added.

Spotify Mix replaces the current font used on the platform, Circular, which Swiss designer Laurenz Brunner created. 

Spotify Mix serves as an example for startups looking to establish a unique brand identity through the use of distinct font styles. While some may view a font change as minor, others believe that it has a substantial impact on how a business is perceived. A font like Comic Sans — widely considered to be the most disliked font due to its childish and unsophisticated nature — could evoke a strong, negative reaction from users, for instance. 

Many major companies have undergone a font refresh to give their brands their own form of visual expression. In 2021, Twitter/X introduced its proprietary font, Chirp, to give it more personality and improve content legibility for users. When Instagram underwent a visual refresh, it introduced a new typeface. Microsoft’s ditching of Calibri as its default font in Office also made headlines. And years ago, when Google unveiled its new design language, Material Design, it included an updated version of its system font, Roboto.

Spotify Mix is gradually rolling out starting today and will continue to roll out over the next few weeks. It’s currently only available for content written in “all languages with Latin-based scripts, as well as Vietnamese,” the company said.