Tiempos Font: The Modern Serif for Editorial & Branding
The Tiempos font is one of the most accomplished serif typefaces of the twenty-first century — a design that takes the familiar DNA of Times New Roman and transforms it into something unmistakably contemporary. Designed by Kris Sowersby at Klim Type Foundry and first released in 2011, Tiempos has become a quiet fixture in editorial design, luxury branding, and the identity systems of publications that take typography seriously. Its name means “times” in Spanish, and that etymology is entirely intentional: Tiempos is a typeface in direct conversation with the most widely read serif in history, but the conversation it holds is one of reinterpretation rather than imitation.
What makes Tiempos remarkable is not a single dramatic gesture but a sustained accumulation of refined decisions. Across its three optical sizes — Tiempos Text, Tiempos Headline, and Tiempos Fine — the family covers an extraordinary range of typographic contexts, from dense body copy to large-scale display settings to the most delicate luxury applications. Publications including Bloomberg and The Outline have trusted it for their editorial typography, and design studios worldwide have adopted it as a go-to serif for projects that demand both legibility and character.
Quick Facts About the Tiempos Font
| Designer | Kris Sowersby |
| Foundry | Klim Type Foundry |
| Year | 2011 (expanded since) |
| Classification | Contemporary transitional serif |
| Variants | Tiempos Text, Tiempos Headline, Tiempos Fine |
| Weights | Regular to Bold across variants |
| Best For | Editorial, longform reading, branding, luxury |
| Price | Commercial (available at Klim Type Foundry) |
| Notable Users | Bloomberg, The Outline, various publications and studios |
The History of the Tiempos Font
Understanding Tiempos requires understanding its designer’s relationship with typographic history. Kris Sowersby, based in Wellington, New Zealand, is one of the most intellectually engaged type designers working today. His typefaces are never exercises in pure formalism — they are arguments about the past, present, and future of typographic tradition. He researches extensively, writes critically about his own process, and approaches each project as both a design challenge and a cultural proposition.
Tiempos emerged from Sowersby’s engagement with the legacy of Times New Roman — arguably the most ubiquitous serif typeface ever created. Stanley Morison’s 1931 commission for The Times of London produced a typeface that would go on to become the default serif for everything from newspapers to academic papers to operating system menus. But that ubiquity came at a cost. By the time Sowersby began working on Tiempos, Times New Roman had become so deeply embedded in everyday life that it had effectively become invisible. It was a typeface people used without choosing, a default rather than a decision. [LINK: /times-new-roman-font/]
Sowersby’s project with Tiempos was to ask what a typeface in the Times tradition could look like if it were designed today, by a designer with full access to contemporary tools, contemporary sensibilities, and a critical awareness of what made the original work and where it fell short. The result is a typeface that shares Times New Roman’s fundamental architecture — the transitional serif structure, the relatively compact proportions, the emphasis on economy and legibility — while departing from it in ways that are both subtle and consequential.
The initial release of Tiempos Text came in 2011. Over the following years, Sowersby expanded the family to include Tiempos Headline and Tiempos Fine, creating a three-tier optical system that addressed different scale and context requirements with dedicated designs rather than simple scaling. This expansion transformed Tiempos from a capable text typeface into a comprehensive serif system suitable for the full range of editorial and brand applications.
Design Characteristics of the Tiempos Font
The design of Tiempos rewards close examination. Its distinctions from Times New Roman and other transitional serifs are not always immediately obvious at a glance, but they become clear in sustained reading and careful comparison. Several characteristics define the Tiempos typeface across its variants.
Moderate Stroke Contrast
Tiempos sits in a carefully calibrated zone of stroke contrast — the difference between the thickest and thinnest parts of each letterform. It has enough contrast to give the typeface visual interest and a sense of elegance, but not so much that the thin strokes become fragile at small sizes or on low-resolution screens. This balance is particularly evident in Tiempos Text, which was designed for sustained reading at body sizes and needs to remain crisp and legible across a range of rendering environments. The Headline and Fine variants push the contrast progressively higher, taking advantage of their intended use at larger sizes where more dramatic modulation can be resolved without legibility concerns.
Sharp but Elegant Serifs
The serifs in Tiempos are decisively shaped — they have a sharpness and precision that gives the typeface its contemporary feel. Where Times New Roman’s serifs can feel blunt or utilitarian, Tiempos’s serifs are more sculpted, with transitions from stroke to serif that have been carefully refined. The serifs are adnate in construction, meaning they blend smoothly into the main strokes rather than meeting them at abrupt right angles. This creates a fluid, continuous line of text that draws the eye forward smoothly — an essential quality for typefaces intended for extended reading.
Large x-Height
Tiempos features a generous x-height — the height of lowercase letters like “x,” “o,” and “n” relative to the overall size of the typeface. A large x-height improves legibility by making the most frequently occurring letter shapes (lowercase) occupy more visual space within a given point size. This is a practical advantage for editorial applications where body text must remain readable at relatively small sizes, and it is one of the ways Tiempos demonstrates its contemporary orientation. Historical serifs often had smaller x-heights and longer ascenders and descenders; Tiempos optimizes for modern reading conditions.
Excellent Text Performance
At the level of paragraph typography — pages of continuous prose — Tiempos Text is exceptionally well-tuned. The spacing between letters and words is calibrated to produce an even, comfortable texture at body sizes. The letterforms are designed to create a consistent rhythm across lines of text, avoiding the distracting irregularities that can make reading feel laborious. The italic is a true cursive design that provides clear emphasis without disrupting the flow of text, and the bold weights are assertive enough to stand out in running text while remaining within the overall color of the page.
Contemporary Refinement
Throughout the family, there is an attention to detail that separates Tiempos from its historical source material. The curves are more precisely controlled, the proportions are more carefully balanced across the alphabet, and the overall design reflects the possibilities of digital type design tools. Where Times New Roman was designed under the constraints of 1930s metal type technology, Tiempos benefits from nearly a century of typographic evolution and the precision of modern Bezier curve editing.
Understanding the Three Tiempos Variants
One of the Tiempos font family’s greatest strengths is its three-tier optical size system. Rather than offering a single design that designers must stretch across all applications, Klim provides three dedicated variants, each engineered for specific contexts. This approach follows a centuries-old typographic practice — punchcutters in the metal type era routinely cut different designs for different sizes — but applies it with contemporary precision.
Tiempos Text
The workhorse of the family. Tiempos Text is designed for body copy, typically set between 8 and 14 points. Its stroke contrast is moderate, its serifs are slightly sturdier, and its overall proportions are optimized for sustained reading. This is the variant you choose for articles, books, long reports, and any context where readers will spend minutes or hours with the text. Tiempos Text delivers the even texture and invisible fluency that long-form reading demands — the reader should not notice the typeface, only absorb the content.
Tiempos Headline
Designed for display use, Tiempos Headline is what you reach for when setting article titles, section headers, pull quotes, and any text that appears at larger sizes. Compared to Tiempos Text, the Headline variant features higher stroke contrast, finer serifs, tighter spacing, and more refined details that become visible and attractive at display sizes. Setting Tiempos Headline at 36 points or above reveals the typeface’s full character — the elegant modulation of strokes, the crisp serif forms, the sophisticated proportions. These details would be invisible or even counterproductive at body text sizes, which is precisely why a dedicated display variant exists.
Tiempos Fine
The most delicate member of the family, Tiempos Fine takes the refinement of the Headline variant even further. With maximum stroke contrast and the finest possible details, Tiempos Fine is intended for large-scale luxury and fashion applications — think magazine mastheads, beauty brand identities, and high-end packaging. At large sizes, Tiempos Fine has a dramatic, almost high-contrast Didone quality while retaining the fundamental warmth and readability of the Tiempos skeleton. It bridges the gap between the editorial utility of a transitional serif and the glamour of a display face.
Tiempos Font vs. Times New Roman vs. Georgia
Because Tiempos exists in direct dialogue with the Times tradition, a comparison with both Times New Roman and Georgia — the two most commonly encountered serifs in that lineage — is instructive. [LINK: /times-new-roman-font/] [LINK: /georgia-font/]
Tiempos vs. Times New Roman
Times New Roman was designed for a specific industrial context: newspaper printing on cheap paper at high speed. Its design reflects those constraints — relatively narrow proportions to fit more text per column, sturdy serifs to survive rough printing conditions, and enough stroke contrast to give visual interest without creating fragile thin strokes. Tiempos shares this fundamental architecture but elevates every aspect. The proportions are more generous, the curves are more fluid, the serifs are more elegantly shaped, and the overall design reflects digital rather than industrial priorities. If Times New Roman is a well-built commuter car, Tiempos is the same engineering ethos applied to a luxury sedan.
Tiempos vs. Georgia
Matthew Carter’s Georgia, designed for Microsoft in 1993, was one of the first serifs designed specifically for screen legibility. It features a very large x-height, open forms, and robust proportions that render clearly even at low resolutions. Tiempos shares Georgia’s concern for screen legibility — the large x-height, the clear letterforms — but achieves it with significantly more typographic sophistication. Georgia is an excellent functional choice, particularly when budget is a constraint, but it lacks the refinement and character that Tiempos brings to editorial and branding applications. Where Georgia reads as practical and utilitarian, Tiempos reads as considered and intentional.
When to Choose Each
Choose Times New Roman when convention demands it — academic submissions, legal documents, contexts where the typeface is specified by a style guide. Choose Georgia when you need a free, screen-optimized serif that performs reliably across all devices and operating systems. Choose Tiempos when you want the authority of the transitional serif tradition delivered with contemporary craft and character — when the typography itself needs to signal quality, care, and design awareness.
Best Tiempos Font Pairings
Tiempos’s versatility as a serif makes it an excellent pairing partner with a range of sans serifs and other complementary typefaces. Its moderate personality — authoritative but not rigid, elegant but not precious — gives it the flexibility to work across different aesthetic registers. [LINK: /font-pairing/]
Tiempos + Sohne
This is the definitive Tiempos pairing, and for good reason. Sohne, also designed by Kris Sowersby at Klim Type Foundry, is a refined neo-grotesque sans serif described as “the memory of Helvetica.” The combination is a study in controlled contrast: Tiempos provides the warmth and authority of the serif tradition while Sohne delivers clean, modern navigation and interface elements. Both typefaces share a designer’s sensibility and a foundry’s quality standards, ensuring that they work together with a coherence that is difficult to achieve with typefaces from different sources. Use Tiempos Headline for article titles, Tiempos Text for body copy, and Sohne for navigation, captions, and metadata. [LINK: /sohne-font/]
Tiempos + Graphik
Christian Schwartz’s Graphik is a contemporary grotesque sans serif with a neutral, workmanlike character. Pairing it with Tiempos creates a clean editorial system where the serif carries narrative authority and the sans handles structural and navigational elements. This combination has a slightly more restrained feel than Tiempos plus Sohne — less conceptually loaded, more functionally driven. It works well for business publications, corporate editorial, and content-heavy websites.
Tiempos + Circular
Lineto’s Circular brings a geometric friendliness that creates an interesting tonal contrast with Tiempos’s transitional seriousness. The combination reads as simultaneously approachable and authoritative — the geometric warmth of the sans tempers the serif’s formality, while the serif prevents the overall design from feeling too casual. This pairing suits lifestyle brands, cultural institutions, and editorial projects that want to feel accessible without sacrificing typographic credibility.
Tiempos + Inter
For projects where the sans serif budget is limited, Rasmus Andersson’s Inter — a free, open-source typeface designed for screen interfaces — pairs surprisingly well with Tiempos. Inter’s large x-height and open apertures echo Tiempos’s own proportional choices, and its neutral-to-warm personality does not clash with the serif’s character. This is a practical pairing for projects where the editorial typography justifies a commercial serif investment but the UI type needs to remain free. [LINK: /inter-font/]
Tiempos + National
Another all-Klim pairing, National is Sowersby’s geometric sans serif. Where Sohne plus Tiempos creates a neo-grotesque-plus-serif dynamic, National plus Tiempos creates a geometric-plus-serif combination with a slightly more designed, less neutral feel. This pairing works well for cultural and arts publications, museum identities, and design-focused brands that want their typography to have a bit more personality than a standard editorial combination.
Tiempos + Untitled Sans
Yet another Klim pairing, but a distinct one. Untitled Sans is deliberately anonymous — a sans serif that steps back and lets other elements take the stage. Paired with Tiempos, it creates a combination where the serif is unambiguously the star and the sans serves purely as a functional workhorse. This is ideal for longform publishing platforms and reading-focused applications where the body text experience is paramount and the interface needs to disappear.
Tiempos + Founders Grotesk
Klim’s Founders Grotesk is a grotesque sans serif with a slightly rough, characterful personality inherited from early twentieth-century metal type. Paired with Tiempos, it creates a combination that feels both contemporary and historically rooted — editorial in the best sense, with a nod to the physical traditions of print journalism. This pairing suits independent publications, literary magazines, and cultural commentary platforms.
Tiempos + Suisse Int’l
Swiss Typefaces’ Suisse Int’l provides a crisper, more overtly Swiss-modernist counterpoint to Tiempos. The combination has a certain intellectual rigor — the precision of the Swiss grotesque tradition meeting the warmth of the transitional serif. This works well for architecture and design publications, academic journals with design ambitions, and brands that position themselves at the intersection of tradition and modernity.
Tiempos Font Alternatives
Tiempos occupies a distinctive position in the typographic landscape, but several alternatives are worth considering depending on budget, licensing needs, and aesthetic preferences. [LINK: /best-serif-fonts/]
Georgia (Free)
The most accessible alternative. Georgia comes pre-installed on virtually every computer and shares Tiempos’s concern for screen legibility and its roots in the transitional serif tradition. It lacks Tiempos’s refinement and optical size variants, but for budget-constrained projects that need a readable screen serif, Georgia remains a solid choice. [LINK: /georgia-font/]
Merriweather (Free)
Eben Sorkin’s Google Font was designed specifically for screen reading and features a large x-height, open forms, and sturdy construction. It is a capable free serif for body text, though it has a warmer, slightly more informal character than Tiempos. Available on Google Fonts, making it a zero-cost option for web projects.
Lora (Free)
Another Google Fonts serif, Lora offers a calligraphic influence that gives it more visible personality than Tiempos. It performs well at body text sizes and includes a true italic that adds character to editorial layouts. Lora is a good free option for projects that want a serif with a bit more warmth and movement than a strict transitional design.
Source Serif Pro (Free)
Frank Griesshammer’s open-source serif for Adobe is one of the most typographically accomplished free serifs available. It has a slightly more traditional character than Tiempos — more rooted in Baroque-era serif conventions — but it offers excellent text performance, a good weight range, and the kind of professional quality that is rare in free typefaces.
Freight Text
Joshua Darden’s Freight Text is a commercial serif with a warm, readable character that occupies similar editorial territory to Tiempos. It has a slightly softer, more approachable personality and is available at a lower price point than Tiempos. Freight Text is a strong choice for projects that need commercial-quality serif typography without the full Klim investment.
Where to Use the Tiempos Font
Tiempos’s three-variant system makes it suitable for an unusually wide range of applications. Understanding which contexts best suit the typeface helps designers make the most of their investment. [LINK: /what-is-typography/]
Editorial and Publishing
This is Tiempos’s natural habitat. News publications, magazines, longform journalism platforms, and literary journals all benefit from Tiempos’s combination of legibility and character. Use Tiempos Text for body copy, Tiempos Headline for article titles and section headers, and a complementary sans serif for navigation and interface elements. The result is a reading experience that feels both authoritative and contemporary.
Branding and Identity
Tiempos Headline and Tiempos Fine are powerful tools for brand identity work. Their refined character signals quality, tradition, and considered design — qualities that are valuable for law firms, financial services, luxury hospitality, and any brand that wants to project seriousness without stuffiness. A wordmark set in Tiempos Fine, combined with a supporting sans serif for communications, creates a brand system that is both distinctive and versatile.
Luxury and Fashion
Tiempos Fine, with its high contrast and delicate details, enters territory typically occupied by Didone serifs like Didot and Bodoni. But where those typefaces can feel cold and austere, Tiempos Fine retains a warmth and readability that makes it more versatile. It works for fashion brand identities, beauty packaging, and luxury editorial without requiring the designer to sacrifice legibility for glamour. [LINK: /trending-fonts/]
Corporate Communications
For companies that want their reports, presentations, and internal communications to feel considered rather than generic, Tiempos Text offers a significant upgrade over Times New Roman or Georgia. It signals that the organization values quality and pays attention to details — a message that extends beyond typography to broader perceptions of competence and care.
Where to Buy the Tiempos Font
Tiempos is available exclusively through Klim Type Foundry’s website at klim.co.nz. Licensing options cover desktop use, web embedding, app integration, and other commercial contexts. Klim’s licensing model is transparent and well-documented, with clear pricing for different use cases and team sizes.
Trial fonts are available for testing, which is a valuable option given the investment involved. Designers can evaluate Tiempos in their actual project context before committing to a full license. The cost reflects the quality and comprehensiveness of the family system — three optical sizes, each with a full range of weights and italics — and is widely considered strong value among design professionals who understand the difference a well-designed typeface makes to their work.
Frequently Asked Questions
What does the name “Tiempos” mean?
“Tiempos” means “times” in Spanish. The name is a direct reference to Times New Roman, the typeface whose legacy Tiempos engages with and reinterprets. Kris Sowersby chose the Spanish translation rather than the English word to create distance from the source material — Tiempos is not Times, but it is in the same lineage. The name signals the typeface’s historical awareness while asserting its independent identity.
What is the difference between Tiempos Text, Tiempos Headline, and Tiempos Fine?
The three variants are optical sizes — designs engineered for different scale ranges. Tiempos Text is built for body copy (roughly 8 to 14 points), with sturdier serifs, moderate stroke contrast, and spacing optimized for continuous reading. Tiempos Headline is designed for display use (roughly 20 points and above), with higher contrast, finer details, and tighter spacing that look best at larger sizes. Tiempos Fine pushes the refinement further still, with maximum contrast and the most delicate details, intended for large-scale luxury and fashion applications. Using the right variant for the right context is essential to getting the best results from the family.
Is Tiempos a good font for body text?
Tiempos Text is an excellent body text typeface — it was specifically designed for sustained reading at small to medium sizes. Its large x-height, moderate stroke contrast, and carefully calibrated spacing produce an even, comfortable text texture that supports long reading sessions without fatigue. For body text, always use the Text variant rather than the Headline or Fine variants, which are designed for display sizes and will not perform as well at small point sizes.
Can I use Tiempos for free?
No. Tiempos is a commercial typeface available exclusively through Klim Type Foundry, and a license must be purchased for any use. Klim does offer trial fonts for evaluation purposes, but production use requires a paid license. For free alternatives in a similar style, consider Georgia (pre-installed on most systems), Merriweather, Lora, or Source Serif Pro — all of which offer capable serif typography at no cost, though none match Tiempos’s level of refinement or its optical size system.
