Montserrat comes from Julieta Ulanovsky, a type designer in Buenos Aires. She was inspired by the old posters and signs of the Montserrat neighbourhood and wanted to preserve that urban lettering and release it under an open licence. In 2017 Jacques Le Bailly redrew the family and lightened the Regular for longer texts, and later that year Ulanovsky, Sol Matas and Juan Pablo del Peral led the work on Cyrillic.
The ZIP holds six static styles: Regular, Medium, SemiBold, Bold, Italic and Bold Italic. The original variable font runs from Thin to Black, which is wider than this pack. Language support covers Cyrillic, Central and Eastern European Latin, and Vietnamese.
It works well for headlines, navigation, logos and posters, and the Regular is calm enough for short blocks of text. Wide letters take up space, so check line lengths on mobile. For body copy, Lora is a reliable serif partner, and Playfair Display adds editorial contrast in titles. Open Sans is a plain, narrower choice for small text.