Corbel is a sans-serif

Sans-serif

In typography, a sans-serif, sans serif or san serif typeface is one that does not have the small projecting features called "serifs" at the end of strokes. The term comes from the French word sans, meaning "without"....

 typeface

Typeface

In typography, a typeface is the artistic representation or interpretation of characters; it is the way the type looks. Each type is designed and there are thousands of different typefaces in existence, with new ones being developed constantly....

 designed by Jeremy Tankard for Microsoft

Microsoft

Microsoft Corporation is an American public multinational corporation headquartered in Redmond, Washington, USA that develops, manufactures, licenses, and supports a wide range of products and services predominantly related to computing through its various product divisions...

 and released in 2005. It is a part of the new suite of fonts that come with Microsoft

Microsoft

Microsoft Corporation is an American public multinational corporation headquartered in Redmond, Washington, USA that develops, manufactures, licenses, and supports a wide range of products and services predominantly related to computing through its various product divisions...

 Windows Vista

Windows Vista

Windows Vista is an operating system released in several variations developed by Microsoft for use on personal computers, including home and business desktops, laptops, tablet PCs, and media center PCs...

 developed to take advantage of ClearType

ClearType

ClearType is a trademark for Microsoft's implementation of subpixel rendering technology. ClearType attempts to improve the appearance of text on certain types of computer display screens by sacrificing color fidelity for additional intensity variation. This trade-off is asserted to work well on...

 to improve the reading experience in Windows Vista

Windows Vista

Windows Vista is an operating system released in several variations developed by Microsoft for use on personal computers, including home and business desktops, laptops, tablet PCs, and media center PCs...

 and Office 2007.

Corbel is designed to give an uncluttered, clean appearance on screen. The letter forms are open with soft, flowing curves. It is legible, clear and functional at small sizes. At larger sizes the detailing and style of the shapes is more apparent resulting in a modern sans serif type with a wide range of possible uses.

Corbel includes text figures

Text figures

Text figures are numerals typeset with varying heights in a fashion that resembles a typical line of running text, hence the name...

 (old style or lowercase numerals), which are very suitable for setting running text. This is an uncommon feature in screen fonts

Screenfont

A screenfont or screen font is:* a computer typeface created specifically for reading from a screen; or* another kind of typeface, like a print font, that is used for reading from a screen...

, especially in sans-serif faces (lowercase numerals are found in Microsoft's serif Georgia typeface

Georgia (typeface)

Georgia is a transitional serif typeface designed in 1993 by Matthew Carter and hinted by Tom Rickner for the Microsoft Corporation, as the serif companion to the first Microsoft sans serif screen font, Verdana. Microsoft released the initial version of the font on November 1, 1996 as part of the...

).

This font, along with Calibri

Calibri

Calibri is a humanist sans-serif typeface family under the Microsoft ClearType Font Collection.In Microsoft Office 2007, it replaced Times New Roman as the default typeface in Word and replaced Arial as the default in PowerPoint, Excel, Outlook, and WordPad...

, Cambria

Cambria (typeface)

Cambria is part of the suite of fonts that comes with Microsoft Windows Vista, Windows 7, Microsoft Office 2007, Microsoft Office 2008 for Mac and Microsoft Office 2011 for Mac, specifically designed for on-screen reading and to be aesthetically pleasing when printed at small sizes. It is a...

, Candara

Candara

Candara is a humanist sans-serif typeface, which is bundled with Microsoft Windows Vista and Windows 7. Candara’s verticals show both entasis and ekstasis on opposite sides of stems, high-branching arcades in the lowercase, large apertures in all open forms, and unique ogee curves on diagonals.The...

, Consolas

Consolas

Consolas is a monospaced typeface, designed by Lucas de Groot. It is a part of a new suite of fonts that take advantage of Microsoft's ClearType font rendering technology. It comes with Microsoft's Windows Vista, Windows 7, Microsoft Office 2007 and Microsoft Visual Studio 2010, and is available...

 and Constantia

Constantia (typeface)

Constantia is part of the suite of typefaces that come with Microsoft Windows Vista, Windows 7, and Office 2007. The development began in 2003....

, is also distributed with the free PowerPoint 2007 Viewer and the Microsoft Office

Microsoft Office

Microsoft Office is a non-free commercial office suite of inter-related desktop applications, servers and services for the Microsoft Windows and Mac OS X operating systems, introduced by Microsoft in August 1, 1989. Initially a marketing term for a bundled set of applications, the first version of...

Compatibility Pack.

External links

• Microsoft Cleartype Font Collection at Microsoft Typography
• http://www.microsoft.com/resources/design/ClearType.html
• http://www.typography.net