M PLUS U
M PLUS U is a free-to-download Japanese sans-serif font from the M+ FONTS project, designed by Coji Morishita. The “M” in M+ stands for “minimum,” and the plus sign signals “a little more than minimum” — the guiding idea behind the whole M+ FONTS family, which started as an open-source project years ago and has since been rebuilt from the ground up with Google’s support. Where M PLUS U sits apart from its newer siblings, M PLUS 1 and M PLUS 2, is in its letterforms: rather than the redesigned GF Latin Plus glyph set those two now use, M PLUS U carries the project’s well-established original character design across a full nine-weight range, from a hairline Thin all the way up to a heavy Black. It’s a modern, comfortable sans-serif built around that same “minimum plus a bit more” philosophy — clean strokes, generous counters, no extra flourish. It’s meant to disappear into whatever you’re using it for while still looking considered.
The differences might be hard to notice but by putting them closer, we can see each unique characteristics if we looked closely. The “U” means Universal, designing with maximum legibility and universally recognizable in mind, for UI font and as an accessible/readability font (UD font). Hence you can see the kana characters are more expanded out and with larger internal spaces, while the latin characters are appeared more expanded. The M PLUS 1 is more modern and formal, designed for everyday use cases while the M PLUS 2 is adhering more towards the traditional form, where curvatures and more naturally drawn strokes are more profound.
Supporting more than 5,700 kanji (full JIS Level 1 + large partial level 2) alongside hiragana, katakana, and a full Latin and Latin Extended character set (with Vietnamese coverage too), M PLUS U is built for everyday, general-purpose use: body text, UI copy, documents, anything that needs to read cleanly across a wide range of sizes and weights. And since it ships as a variable font, you’re not limited to the nine named instances — you can dial in any weight along that Thin-to-Black spectrum. It’s released under the SIL Open Font License, so it’s free for both personal and commercial projects.
Usage Permission
- Free for personal, non-commercial, and commercial use.
- Released under SIL Open Font License (OFL) 1.1.
Link
To download, visit the link above and you will see blue “Get Font” button on the top right. Click on to follow the download instruction. Once installed, you can select this font in your writing or design tools under the family name “M PLUS U”.
Supported characters
- Hiragana and Katakana
- Kanji (full JIS Level 1 and partial Level 2)
- Alphanumerics
- Symbols and Punctuations