Rather than confining itself to a single style, Ricardo combines the best of two worlds: the conceptual clarity of a geometric design with the legibility and warmth of a humanist design. Its open counters, crisp joints, and even texture allow for effective use in long-form text settings, while its simple geometric shapes combined with some unexpected details make it highly suitable for display settings such as branding and marketing. Ricardo contains seven carefully chosen weights, ranging from ExtraLight to ExtraBold. The Medium weight functions as a slightly darker alternative to the Regular. Ricardo's 812 glyphs per style support over a hundred languages, and also include arrows and case-sensitive punctuation.

The Ricardo family consists of three subfamilies: Ricardo, Ricardo ALT, and Ricardo ITA. Ricardo contains the most conventional forms, and is the most suitable option for long-form text. Ricardo ALT contains simplified shapes for the a, j, u, and t, which are also accessible through Stylistic Set 2 within Ricardo (in opentype-savvy applications). The cursive-like italics of Ricardo ITA provide a slightly more eccentric alternative to the standard italics. Furthermore, all styles contain stylistic alternates that swap the blunt apexes in A, M, N, V, W, v, w, y, and 1 for pointier ones. These are also accessible through Stylistic Set 1. Other opentype goodness includes: (discretionary) ligatures, smallcaps, case-sensitive forms, fractions, nine sets of numerals, and more.

David Ricardo (1772-1823) is considered the first of the classical economists, and combined ground-breaking mathematical abstractions with an understandable down-to-earth way of explaining his ideas.