“A Venetian oldstyle for screens”, Fern was started by David Jonathan Ross in 2013, originally intended to be a part of Font Bureau’s Reading Edge Series for small text on the web. A first official version was released to members of DJR’s Font of the Month Club in October 2018 as Fern Micro (previously: Fern RE) in Regular and Italic styles.

The June 2021 installment added Fern Text (used for sample), variable fonts, and ornaments. Fern Titling Caps followed in July 2022. These were amended with a lowercase and released in July 2026 as Fern Display, together with a fourth intermediate optical size, Fern Deck.