Siesta
a typeface for doing nothing
The idea
Made for the hour when nothing needs you.
Siesta is a hairline Didone: razor thin strokes hanging off firm stems, the kind of contrast usually reserved for perfume boxes and hotel lobbies. It was drawn for the opposite mood. Long lunches. Warm afternoons. The nap you take because you can.
It began as an experiment in our lab, drawn part by part and then pushed further with AI in the loop: proposing, measuring, arguing back. Two styles came out of it, a Regular and a true Italic, and every stem, bowl and serif in both was checked against the last.
Anatomy
One letter, three times.
A g is the letter that catches people out. Hang its tail off the fat side of the bowl and it stops being a g at all: it reads as a nine. So this one is built like a q whose stem changes its mind at the last moment, curling left under the baseline instead of stopping straight.
The bowl is the same bowl as the d and the q, to the unit. That is the whole method here: draw a part once, get it right, then let every letter that needs it share it. Adjust the bowl and eleven letters move together.
Try it. Slowly.
Waterfall
How low can a hairline go?
Siesta
Mañana
Golden hour
Do not disturb
The quick brown fox naps beside the lazy dog.
The quick brown fox naps beside the lazy dog.
The quick brown fox naps beside the lazy dog.
Below 20 pixels a hairline is a rumor. Set it big, give it air, let the thin strokes do the talking.
The italic
A real italic, not a lean.
Most italics are the roman pushed sideways. Siesta’s italic is drawn: a single storey a and g, a descending f, cursive entries and exits, twelve degrees of recline. The difference between leaning and lying down.
two storeys fold into one
the loop lets go
the italic f descends
mirrored to the unit
Character set
210 characters, one long afternoon.
Figures
Numbers keep their columns.
Lining, tabular figures on a single fixed advance. Prices line up, totals behave, even when the afternoon does not. Punctuation, currency and the whole Latin-1 block came along too.
Take it home.
Free for anything. Websites, posters, drinks menus, wedding invitations, apps. The license is the SIL Open Font License 1.1: use it, embed it, remix it. Just never sell the files on their own, and call any fork something else.
© 2026 Dots Studio · SIL Open Font License 1.1 · Instagram