Japanese fonts in Framer

Both a serif and a sans are already in the picker

Framer's font picker carries Google Fonts, which means Noto Sans JP for a sans and Noto Serif JP for a serif can be selected directly. No setup, no code, nothing to install. The Japanese pages we published in Framer load exactly these two.

For a face you have licensed yourself: select a text layer, open the font picker in the right panel, and use Upload Fonts under the Custom tab. Framer's own help is explicit about two things — use .woff2 for speed, and confirm yourself that the licence covers web use.

• · If you set Japanese body text in a serif, the smaller its character face, the more line height it wants.
• · Changing one step of weight within a single family reads quieter than changing family between heading and body.
• · If the Latin and the Japanese are different families, match the Latin x-height to the Japanese. Unmatched, the English floats off the line.

You do not have to assume a Japanese font is too heavy

A Japanese face holds thousands to tens of thousands of characters, and loading all of them would of course be slow. Framer states that it serves fonts in subsets and loads only the subsets a page's characters actually need, showing a size-matched system face first and swapping when the real one arrives (font-display: swap).

So "avoid Japanese fonts because they are heavy" is, in most cases, an unnecessary decision. Before you give up a typeface for speed, look at the number and the size of your images. That is almost always where the weight is.

The typeface can be right and the page can still look cheap

This is the part that matters. You chose correctly, and it still does not read as well as the English did. The cause is almost never the face — it is how the characters are set. In Japanese, three things break, and only three.

All three are repaired on the published site rather than in the editor. All three are free to try, each is one button, and none of them asks you to write code. They are ours.

The three working together on one page is laid out in Japanese typography in Framer.

Can I use a commercial Japanese typeface in Framer?

Yes, if your licence covers web use. Upload it under the Custom tab as .woff2. Whether the licence permits it is on you to confirm — a desktop licence usually does not cover a website, and foundries differ.

Which is safer for a brand site, a serif or a sans?

Neither is safer. A serif carries authority and age and wants more line height; a sans is quieter at small sizes and survives a phone better. Decide it from the length of the text on the page, not from the mood of the brand.

Should the English and the Japanese share one typeface?

They rarely can. What matters is that they agree at every weight and size you use — matched x-height, comparable contrast, and the same amount of air. That agreement is a design decision, not a setting.

Can you just do this part for us?

Yes. Setting the Japanese on an existing site is the smallest, cheapest way to work with us, and we will tell you honestly if the free plugins already solve it and you do not need us at all.

We design and build in Framer

If what you actually need is the site rather than the fix — a launch, a studio front, a full site your team can edit afterwards — that is the work we do, and everything above is simply part of it rather than a line on the invoice.