Ukraine Unveils Zakon, a National Typeface to Replace Russian Fonts

Ukraine's official documents will no longer be set in Russian-designed Cyrillic typefaces once Zakon, the country's new national font, goes into full effect. The name means "law" in Ukrainian, and it targets a very specific dependency: fonts from the Russian foundry ParaType, which Ukraine's Ministry of Culture says cooperates with Russian authorities.

For years, designers, military personnel and citizens have called for a swap. The stakes are concrete. ParaType's Izhitsa appears on official documents, certificates, awards, diplomas, battle flags and plaques — the paper trail of the state itself.

Parliament adopted a resolution in January to create a national typeface, framing it as a way to address the legacy of Russian cultural influence from the Soviet era. A beta version became available on October 29.

Who designed it?

Four Ukrainian type designers built Zakon, unveiled last month in Cyrillic and Latin characters:

• Oleksiy Chekal, who designed lettering for the Orthodox Church of Ukraine
• Hennadiy Zarechniuk, typographic and type designer
• Dmytro Rastvortsev, designer of UAF Sans for the Ukrainian military
• Andrij Shevchenko, former winner of Ukraine's modern business font competition

Taras Ishchyk, who previously designed the visual identity for the Armed Forces of Ukraine, led the project. Ukraine's government partnered with the country's largest online jobs board, Work.ua, which funded the work.

What does the typeface actually look like?

Zakon is a serif with flared, asymmetrical serifs and diamond tittles on letters like I and Yi — a Cyrillic letter unique to Ukrainian. Its proportions follow classical Roman typefaces, placing Ukrainian type in the wider European tradition rather than the Russian one.

The letterforms draw on the work of six Ukrainian artists, including Vasyl Krychevsky, who designed Ukraine's 1918 trident coat of arms and its banknotes.

These forms "help Ukrainians connect with their own visual heritage," the Ministry of Culture said in a statement. "This matters because state awards, military battle flags, and government building signs in Ukraine are still often set in typefaces whose Cyrillic versions were produced by ParaType."

Work.ua framed its role in cultural terms. "A country's visual language is more than its coat of arms and flag," the company said. "The way letters appear in laws, orders, diplomas and awards also shapes the country's image — and can either perpetuate someone else's tradition or develop its own."

When will it reach every passport and battle flag?

Not immediately. That's the caveat. Full implementation waits on beta testing of how the font handles large volumes of text — official paperwork, newspaper layouts, print publications. Zakon has already appeared in a promotional video for the national football team, but its main purpose is official and ceremonial documents.

Zakon text is free to download, and its makers are soliciting feedback on readability, weight and performance at different sizes. Not everything is open. Zakon Decor is exclusive, reserved for ceremonial inscriptions. Zakon Letterpress belongs solely to the Verkhovna Rada, Ukraine's parliament.

A refined, expanded version arrives early next year, with extended characters expected in early 2027. The plan: additional writing systems over the next year to make Zakon multilingual.

Ukraine blames centuries of Moscow policy for erasing what made its lettering distinct. But the style has been revived before — during the brief independence after 1917, and again in the post-war diaspora. Zakon continues a recovery that history has interrupted twice already.