When WeDig Media began work on the new website for the Federation of Museums and Art Galleries of Wales, we expected the usual challenges that come with large cultural projects—complex content, membership systems, diverse audiences, and the responsibility of representing Welsh heritage with care. What we didn’t expect was to uncover a striking absence in the world of digital design: modern fonts do not fully support the Welsh language. The discovery was all thanks to the fantastic typographically obsessed design agency, Split, who we worked with closely.
While many European languages have typographic features that recognise their unique letterforms—such as ñ, œ, or ô—Welsh has been left behind. Despite the language’s long history and distinctive sounds, contemporary typefaces do not include properly formed ligatures for Welsh digraphs such as ll, dd, and others that are integral to Cymraeg.
For a project rooted in celebrating Welsh culture this omission mattered.
Turning a Problem Into a Creative Challenge
Rather than workaround the issue, we decided to tackle it. Collaborating with design studio Split and a specialist type company, we were able to create something that didn’t yet exist: a modern, fully supported Welsh‑adapted font.
The process involved more than simply joining two letters together. To design ligatures that genuinely represent Welsh sounds, Split explored historical manuscripts—some dating back to the medieval period—to understand how these letters have been formed throughout Welsh literary history. What they found was that, although examples existed, they were typically bound to older, decorative styles rather than something suitable for contemporary digital environments.
The result is a new set of carefully designed Welsh ligatures: modern, usable, respectful of tradition, and ready for today’s digital landscape.
Why This Matters for Digital Wales
At We Dig Media, we work with Welsh organisations regularly, and yet even we had never fully appreciated the gap in Welsh typographic support. Like many, we had simply grown accustomed to the limitations of existing fonts. But once the problem became visible, it was impossible to ignore.
For a language that is used daily across education, culture, heritage, and government, digital design should not rely on partial representation. Welsh deserves typefaces that celebrate its structure and sound as confidently as any other European language.
The Federation’s new website provided the perfect moment to change that.
A Hidden Omission, Now Brought Into the Light
What began as a website build evolved into an opportunity to address a gap that has existed for far too long. By developing a Welsh‑supported font, we’re proud to contribute something meaningful—not just to a single project, but to the broader digital identity of Wales.
This is just the beginning, and we’re excited to see how the Welsh design community helps shape what comes next.
Since the site was completed Oli from Split met, fortuitously, with some of the Senedd members to discuss the issue around the lack of Welsh representation within digital typography.