Times New Roman: history, who uses it, and a free twin

Made for a London newspaper in 1932, then shipped with Windows.

In use, with Inter

Edit the words to try your own. The pairing tool has more body fonts.

History

• Stanley Morison of Monotype and Victor Lardent of The Times' advertising department designed it for The Times.[1]
• It first appeared in The Times on 3 October 1932, and the paper kept it for about 40 years.[1]
• Tinos, derived from Liberation Serif, is a free font with the same metrics.[1]

Who uses it

• Every version of Windows since Windows 3.1[1]
• The US State Department’s standard font from 2004 to 2023, and again from 2025[1]
• The Australian Government logo, as a Times New Roman Bold wordmark[1]

Sources

1. 1. Wikipedia: Times New Roman

The free alternative

Tinos is from Google’s Croscore set and has the same character widths as Times New Roman.

Body fonts that go with Tinos:

• InterA screen sans body makes a newspaper serif heading look current.
• Source Sans 3Humanist sans with gentle contrast, so it sits well next to a transitional serif.
• Libre FranklinFranklin Gothic shapes, the classic newspaper sans to go with a newspaper serif.

Other fonts

• TrajanRoman inscription capitals, and the movie poster font.
• HelveticaThe Swiss sans that ended up on subway signs and airline logos.
• ArialDrawn to the same widths as Helvetica, shipped with Windows.
• FuturaThe 1927 geometric sans of circles and straight lines.
• GothamWide geometric capitals taken from New York building signs.
• ImpactA 1965 Sheffield display face that became the meme font.
• GaramondSixteenth century Paris type, revived many times since.
• DidotHigh contrast French type, and the look of fashion magazines.
• BaskervilleA Birmingham printer’s sharper, lighter serif from the 1750s.
• Comic SansDrawn in 1994 for the speech bubbles in Microsoft Bob.
• CourierAn IBM typewriter face that screenplays never gave up.
• RobotoGoogle's Android system font since 2011.