Equality Sans: A Typeface for Marriage Equality

Two designers have incorporated the pink-and-red equals sign into a new font

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Remember when that pink-and-red equal sign popped up all over your Facebook NewsFeed and Twitter stream? Friends were changing their profile pictures to the little icon and tweeting it during recent legislative procedures around the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), making it a rally of support for civil rights, while becoming a social phenomenon for the Human Rights Campaign. Now, two designers have incorporated the logo into a new typeface: Equality Sans.

Users can download the free-to-use typeface, so that with every stroke of a key, they can show their support for marriage equality.  The designers, Caprice Yu and Steve Peck, set out to expand the message of marriage equality with the new typeface, saying the “message is in the medium.”

(MORE: What Is the Red Equal Sign All Over Facebook and Twitter?)

But would reading an email or seeing a status update with the pink-and-red equal sign be too much for one’s eyes?

The team said that the equal signs were overt, but carried a lot weight, Co.Design reported. “The thinking was that the idea of equality supersedes the message, no matter what the literal message is,” the designers explained.

So, although a reader may not be able to read the literal message from someone using the Equality Sans typeface, Co.Design noted that they should be struck over and over again by the equals sign – the iconic symbol of the movement, originally developed by Stone Yamashita.

MORE: 13 Parodies of the Human Rights Campaign’s Red Equal Sign