BC Sans

The standard font for B.C. Government digital services is BC Sans. BC Sans is an open source font family, and is a modified version of Noto Sans, developed by Google. BC Sans includes modifications to support Indigenous languages in British Columbia.

Font weights and styles included:

• BC Sans Regular - 400
• BC Sans Italic - 400
• BC Sans Bold - 700
• BC Sans Bold Italic - 700
• BC Sans Light - 300
• BC Sans Light Italic - 300

Typography standards for print are on the B.C. Visual Identity Program page.

Download Files

If you are wanting the fonts in different file formats, here are all the options

• Download all font files (.eot, .ttf, .otf, .woff, .woff2)
• Download files for your local computer (.otf, .ttf)

Integration

npm i --save @bcgov/bc-sans

React

Embed into a root level component import '@bcgov/bc-sans/css/BC_Sans.css'

Typography.js

See Typography.js installation instructions here

import Typography from 'typography';
import '@bcgov/bc-sans/css/BC_Sans.css';

const typography = new Typography({
  baseFontSize: '16px',
  baseLineHeight: 1.25,
  headerFontFamily: ['BC Sans', 'Noto Sans', 'Verdana', 'Arial', 'sans-serif'],
  bodyFontFamily: ['BC Sans', 'Noto Sans', 'Verdana', 'Arial', 'sans-serif'],
  scaleRatio: 2.074,
});

export default typography;

Why are there two similar CSS files in this package?

For new projects, you only need to include one of the two CSS files: css/BC_Sans.css. Then, reference BC Sans in your CSS font-family rules.

Originally, this package shipped with just css/BCSans.css. This file uses BCSans (no space) as the font-family name in its @font-face declarations. Lots of existing application code references this name. But the metadata in the font files use BC Sans (with a space) for the font family name. As a result, UI design tools like Figma output code using BC Sans from the font files. This generated code would not work directly with this package without manual intervention.

css/BC_Sans.css uses BC Sans for its CSS font-family names. This matches the family metadata fields in the font files. Font style code generated from Figma works with css/BC_Sans.css. New projects should use css/BC_Sans.css for smoothest designer to developer hand-off. For existing projects, there is no need to switch.

Contributing

Integrating it differently? Create a pull request to help us build out the documentation.