Mada — Free Arabic Google Font
Mada takes its cue from road signage around Cairo, Egypt — Khaled Hosny's unmodulated, open Arabic forms pair with a Latin component adapted from Source Sans Pro. The low-contrast, low-descender design was built for small point sizes and interface text, though its clean geometry scales up well for display use too.
About Mada
Mada is by Khaled Hosny, the Cairo-based designer who also made Amiri and Reem Kufi, and was added to Google Fonts in 2017. He modelled its unmodulated Arabic on road signage around Cairo: low descenders, open contours and low contrast. The Latin component is a slightly modified Source Sans Pro, the Adobe design led by Paul D. Hunt, who is credited alongside Hosny.
Mada's letterforms stay unusually consistent in stroke width across all its weights, which makes it a dependable choice for data-heavy layouts (tables, dashboards) where inconsistent weight jumps between Light and Bold can make numbers harder to scan.
Designers: Khaled Hosny, Paul D. Hunt
Best used for
- Signage and wayfinding
- Interface and UI text
- Small point-size body copy
How Mada compares
Mada and Noto Sans Arabic are both unmodulated, but Mada's low descenders let lines sit closer together, which helps in tight interfaces and on signs. Compared with Cairo, Mada has no Kufi angularity; its shapes are plainer and more utilitarian, closer to wayfinding lettering than to a branding face. If your project mixes signage with long reading, Mada can handle the signs and a Naskh family the paragraphs.
Tips for using Mada
Pick Mada when Arabic has to stay legible small or at a distance: signage, wayfinding, app labels and captions. Its low descenders suit single-line interface elements with a fixed height. The Source Sans Pro-based Latin means bilingual signs match out of the box, and at display sizes the Black weight gives it a stark, modernist look.
Styles & weights
8 weights, self-hosted:
- 200 — Extra Light Download .ttf
- 300 — Light Download .ttf
- 400 — Regular Download .ttf
- 500 — Medium Download .ttf
- 600 — SemiBold Download .ttf
- 700 — Bold Download .ttf
- 800 — Extra Bold Download .ttf
- 900 — Black Download .ttf
Arabic character preview
ا ب ت ث ج ح خ د ذ ر ز س ش ص ض ط ظ ع غ ف ق ك ل م ن ه و ي
بسم الله الرحمن الرحيم — مرحبا بالعالم — ٠١٢٣٤٥٦٧٨٩
Download Mada
Using Mada on the web
Load it from the Google Fonts CDN:
<link href="https://fonts.googleapis.com/css2?family=Mada:wght@200;300;400;500;600;700;800;900&display=swap" rel="stylesheet">Then reference it in your CSS:
font-family: "Mada", sans-serif;License
Licensed under the SIL Open Font License — free for personal and commercial use. What the OFL allows →