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DINDOT

Industrial roots.
Friendly by nature.

DIN was drawn for railway carriages, road signs and engineering drawings. DINDOT keeps that precision and rounds every corner and dot. Four weights with italics, 949 characters and tabular figures. Made for GetDot, free under the SIL Open Font License.

Type tester

Size104 px

Click the text to edit it.

Sphinx of black quartz, judge my vow.

Four weights

DIN 17 was the upright lettering for signs, DIN 16 the slanted one for drawings. Both set the stroke at a seventh of the capital height, as Medium does.

Regular: DIN 17

Medium: DIN 17

SemiBold: DIN 17

Bold: DIN 17

Regular Italic: DIN 16

Medium Italic: DIN 16

SemiBold Italic: DIN 16

Bold Italic: DIN 16

Zero

Dot
Weight
Turn

Characters

Every official language of the EU and of Central Asia. Text tagged Polish, Romanian or Bulgarian gets its own accents and letterforms.

In use

Rendered, not photographed. All the text in them is set in DINDOT.

A cream enamel platform sign hangs on two steel bars beneath a station canopy in low morning sun. Dark lettering reads Gleis 1, with Leipzig-Stötteritz below, beside an orange square holding a left arrow.
Platform sign, vitreous enamel, 1.2 m wide
An LCD departure board hangs from the roof of a station hall before sunrise. Under Abfahrt / Departures and the time 08:12 it lists four trains with times and platforms: the ICE 597 to Berlin Hbf, the S 1 to Leipzig-Stötteritz via Völkerschlachtdenkmal, five minutes late in orange, the IC 2013 to Köln Messe/Deutz and the ICE 1013 to München Hbf.
Departure board, LCD, 2 m wide
Close-up of a brushed stainless steel nameplate screwed to an anthracite powder-coated machine housing beside a row of vent slots, in soft window light. Engraved black lettering reads DINDOT, Type 1451-R, then Serial 0.21 / 2026, Supply 230 V ~ 50 Hz, Current 16 A, Protection IP 65, Ambient −20 … +55 °C.
Nameplate, engraved stainless steel on anthracite powder coat, 120 × 70 mm
A yellow German town sign with a black border reads Heidelberg over Stadtteil Schlierbach. It hangs in a galvanised tube frame on a grey post by the Neckar. Behind it, out of focus in warm morning light, houses step up a wooded slope of amber and rust trees above a misty river.
Town sign, Zeichen 310, retroreflective sheeting, 900 × 600 mm
A stapled, laser-printed A4 revenue report lies on a grey desk in window light, a pen resting on its right edge and a white mug of coffee cropped at the right. Under the GetDot fox logo the page reads “Revenue, September 2026”: €208,008, up 6.1% on August, sessions 22,008, revenue per session €9.45 and year to date €1.53m, above a bar chart of monthly revenue with September in orange and a table by channel.
Revenue report, printed A4

History

Engineers drew DIN 1451, in a committee led by Ludwig Goller of Siemens.

DIN 16 and DIN 17 technical lettering on construction grids, in an open 1950 German standards handbook
DIN 16 / DIN 171940 standard sheets reproduced in DIN Taschenbuch 2, Zeichnungsnormen, August 1950. Deutscher Normenausschuß, Berlin W 15. Reference: Fontwerk ↗
  1. 1905–08

    Railways

    The Prussian state railways set one lettering for all their locomotives and wagons. In 1920 Germany’s railways merged into the Reichsbahn.

    The 1908 drawing ↗
  2. 1919

    DIN 16

    DIN’s first lettering, written by hand on a grid.

    DIN 16-1:1919-07 ↗
  3. 1931–36

    DIN 1451

    A draft in 1931, a standard in 1936. German road signs still use it.

    DIN 1451:1931-08 ↗
  4. 1938

    DIN 17

    From 1940 its sheet, like DIN 16’s, says it was developed from DIN 1451.

    DIN 17:1938-06 ↗
  5. 1976

    ISO 3098

    As DIN 6776, ISO’s lettering replaced DIN 16 and 17: a new design, its slant still 75°.

    DIN EN ISO 3098-2 ↗
  6. 2017–21

    DINish

    Charles Nix drew D-DIN at Monotype for Datto, under the OFL. Altinn-DIN and then DINish built on it.

    DINish on GitHub ↗
  7. 2026

    DINDOT

    Rick Radewagen made it at GetDot. Its round dots hold as much ink as DINish’s square ones.

Other famous DINs

DIN began in 1917, in the middle of the war. Its first standard, DIN 1, was the taper pin.

  • A5A6A7A7DIN 476 / 1922

    A4

    Sides at 1:√2, and A0 is one square metre.

  • QWERTZASDFGH<YXCVBDIN 2137

    QWERTZ

    German has far more z than y. Ä, Ö, Ü and ß have keys of their own.

  • 13 mmDIN 934

    The hex nut

    An M8 nut takes a 13 mm wrench. Stores still sell it as DIN 934, decades after ISO 4032 replaced it.

  • 180 mm98.4double DINDIN 75490

    The car radio

    The slot is 50 mm tall. Car stereos are still sold as single or double DIN.

DIN is historically associated with “Deutsche Industrie-Normen”. Today it stands for Deutsches Institut für Normung. DINDOT is an independent derivative, not an official DIN typeface.

Wear it.

DINDOT 0.22ZIP, 3 MB

Sixteen font files and web CSS with presets for tables.