Oswald is a reworking of the classic style historically represented by the 'Alternate Gothic' sans serif typefaces. The characters of Oswald were initially re-drawn and reformed to better fit the pixel grid of standard digital screens. Oswald is designed to be used freely across the internet by web browsers on desktop computers, laptops and mobile devices.

- Since the initial launch in 2011, Oswald was updated continually by Vernon Adams until 2014. Vernon added Light and Bold weights, support for more Latin and Cyrillic languages, tightened the spacing and kerning and made many glyph refinements throughout the family based on hundreds of users' feedback.
- In 2016 the Latin part of the family was updated by Kalapi Gajjar to complete the work started by Vernon.
- In January 2019, it was updated with a variable font Weight axis.
- In July 2023, the font was upgraded with a Cyrillic character set expansion, and the rendering of math symbols was improved.

To contribute, see github.com/googlefonts/OswaldFont