The Red Onion Font

kottke.org August 13, 2025 By Jason Kottke

The latest post from The Pudding starts off about as good as possible to attract the likes of me: “This is a project about onions and math.” I mean, yes. I’m in. And I enjoyed the interactive article, Dicing an Onion the Mathematically Optimal Way, but the design was absolutely delightful and onion-y:

Dicing an Onion<br />
the Mathematically Optimal Way where the letters of the word 'onion' look like sliced red onions

the letters of the word 'explore' look like sliced red onions

interface slider elements where the slider knobs look like sliced red onions

They even used an onion gradient for the border of the page. This must have been so fun to work on! Initially, I thought they’d designed the onion font, but a quick search turned up Handmadefont’s OnioType Font:

type sample ('the quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog') where the letters look like sliced red onions

From the description, it sounds like the letterforms are made from real onions:

Each letter is lovingly crafted from a perfectly sliced red onion, where nature’s concentric rings do most of the design heavy-lifting. Vivid purples, tender whites, and sudden flashes of yellow form shapes so unexpectedly elegant, you’ll never look at a salad the same way again.

But I dunno…Photoshop might be a better guess. Still! I love this font and kudos to The Pudding for putting it to good use.

Tags: cooking · design · food · infoviz · mathematics · The Pudding · typography

💬 Join the discussion on kottke.org

The latest post from The Pudding starts off about as good as possible to attract the likes of me: “This is a project about onions and math.” I mean, yes. I’m in. And I enjoyed the interactive article, Dicing an Onion the Mathematically Optimal Way, but the design was absolutely delightful and onion-y:

Dicing an Onion<br />
the Mathematically Optimal Way where the letters of the word 'onion' look like sliced red onions

the letters of the word 'explore' look like sliced red onions

interface slider elements where the slider knobs look like sliced red onions

They even used an onion gradient for the border of the page. This must have been so fun to work on! Initially, I thought they’d designed the onion font, but a quick search turned up Handmadefont’s OnioType Font:

type sample ('the quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog') where the letters look like sliced red onions

From the description, it sounds like the letterforms are made from real onions:

Each letter is lovingly crafted from a perfectly sliced red onion, where nature’s concentric rings do most of the design heavy-lifting. Vivid purples, tender whites, and sudden flashes of yellow form shapes so unexpectedly elegant, you’ll never look at a salad the same way again.

But I dunno…Photoshop might be a better guess. Still! I love this font and kudos to The Pudding for putting it to good use.

Tags: cooking · design · food · infoviz · mathematics · The Pudding · typography

💬 Join the discussion on kottke.org

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Published on August 13, 2025 by Jason Kottke

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