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Quicksand

At its regular weight Quicksand looks lighter on the page than 98% of the sans serifs, by ink coverage. Only 9% of today’s sans serifs were added to the library before it. It has a shorter x-height than 52% of the 716 sans serifs with ascenders.

Outlines drawn from the Quicksand file at weight 400. The dashed line is the median x-height of the sans serifs.

Measure, per 1,000 em	Quicksand	Median of 732 sans serifs
Ascender (top of d)	740	740
Cap height (top of H)	700	702
x-height (top of x)	516	519
Descender (foot of p)	−200	−213
x-height ÷ cap height	0.74	0.70
Average lowercase width	522	522
Ink coverage, a–z	30.1%	40.2%

Where it sitsEvery sans serif family is a dot

X-height across the 716 sans serifs with ascenders

294672

Just below: Anuphan, Bricolage Grotesque; just above: Clarity City, Public Sans

Average lowercase width across the 732 sans serifs

1831,319

Just below: Spline Sans, Host Grotesk; just above: Inder, Open Sans; level with: TASA Orbiter

Weights and styles

One variable file per style covers every weight from 300 to 700, with no italic; five of the nine standard steps fall inside that range.

Axis	Tag	Range	In the library
Weight	wght	300 to 700	545 families

Scripts3 subsets · families sharing each

Inside the file

In the measured file: 812 glyphs and 694 mapped Unicode characters; 18 OpenType feature tags.

Declared features: fractions, superscripts, subscripts, ordinals, standard ligatures, discretionary ligatures, slashed zero, case-sensitive forms and one stylistic set.

Measured neighboursClosest in proportion; differences per 1,000 em

Ralewaytaller x-height, wider M PLUS 1ptaller x-height, wider M PLUS Rounded 1ctaller x-height, wider Montserrattaller x-height, wider Albert Sansshorter x-height, narrower Montserrat Alternatestaller x-height, wider

Outside the sans serif class

Datatypeequal x-height, narrower Saira Stencilshorter x-height, wider Chilankashorter x-height, same width

Rank every family against Quicksand