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Show HN: Typedetail.com – featuring Apple's new typeface San Francisco

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Re: Show HN: Typedetail.com – featuring Apple's new typeface San Francisco

#41

Post by walshemj »

mortenjorck wrote: post #29
namuol wrote: post #10

> The typeface is licensed exclusively to registered third-party developers for the “design and development of applications for the Apple Watch”. [1] Cool. Another font for web designers to wrongfully assume I have installed on my system. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Francisco_(2014_typeface)

That practice died out years ago with the rise of browser support for @font-face and the hosted webfont industry. Of course, you'll still encounter legacy sites that assume installed fonts, but no professional designer is going to specify type that way on a new project.

Ah you mean yet more stuff to download and slowdown page loading

Re: Show HN: Typedetail.com – featuring Apple's new typeface San Francisco

#42

Post by currysausage »

Gracana wrote: post #31
cpr wrote: post #27

Is it OK to say the emperor has no clothes? I think this is an ugly, clumsy typeface, designed primarily for legibility in a particular small application (the watch). Now it's now rumored to be destined as the system font in 10.11. Going from graceful, readable Lucida to ok-only-in-Retina-but-even-then-hard-to-read-and-overused Helvetica to this new San Francisco is just plain frustrating. Maybe readability trumps ta…

What's ugly about it? It doesn't even seem interesting or different enough from anything else to call it beautiful or ugly.

It is reminiscent of German industrial typeface DIN [1], which looks stylish in certain contexts (advertising), but arguably too stylish and cold for general use. An OS font will be used for everything from obituaries to love letters. Helvetica is a horrible screen font [2], but, unlike San Francisco, it doesn't impose a certain mood on text.

(On the other hand, SF's readability kicks Helvetica's ass, so at the end of the day, I do welcome this change. But Apple could do so much better.)

[1] FF DIN, an adaption for use in graphic design: https://www.myfonts.com/fonts/fontfont/ff-din/

[2] See e.g. http://spiekermann.com/en/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/helveti...

Re: Show HN: Typedetail.com – featuring Apple's new typeface San Francisco

#43

Post by rz2k »

thanatropism wrote: post #25

Ask type professionals: what are good typefaces for spreadsheets (tabular numeric data), onscreen and in print? Onscreen I've been switching Excel's default to Consolas, which is more compact yet more readable. Other programs have unchangeable defaults (but they rely more on fix-width, too).

Not from the perspective of a type professional, but Tahoma is still very readable down to 8 point, for when you want to see a lot of cells at the same time. I don't find that monospacing is any help in spreadsheets.

Re: Show HN: Typedetail.com – featuring Apple's new typeface San Francisco

#44

Post by towelguy »

currysausage wrote: post #42
Gracana wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's ugly about it? It doesn't even seem interesting or different enough from anything else to call it beautiful or ugly.

It is reminiscent of German industrial typeface DIN [1], which looks stylish in certain contexts (advertising), but arguably too stylish and cold for general use. An OS font will be used for everything from obituaries to love letters. Helvetica is a horrible screen font [2], but, unlike San Francisco, it doesn't impose a certain mood on text. (On the other hand, SF's readability kicks Helvetica's ass, so at the end o…

I think this is a case of https://xkcd.com/915/

Re: Show HN: Typedetail.com – featuring Apple's new typeface San Francisco

#45

Post by antimagic »

cpr wrote: post #27

Is it OK to say the emperor has no clothes? I think this is an ugly, clumsy typeface, designed primarily for legibility in a particular small application (the watch). Now it's now rumored to be destined as the system font in 10.11. Going from graceful, readable Lucida to ok-only-in-Retina-but-even-then-hard-to-read-and-overused Helvetica to this new San Francisco is just plain frustrating. Maybe readability trumps ta…

"Is it OK to say the emperor has no clothes?"

Not really. That particular expression (and others like it such as "the elephant in the room" is more to get across the idea that there is an obvious truth staring people in the face and they don't see it / talk about it. I don't know that you can really say that San Francisco is objectively ugly - an opinion that I advance based on the fact that there are an awful lot of people out there that haven't even noticed what font is being used. If it was a truly ugly font, you would have every second post about the Apple Watch talking about how ugly the text is...

Re: Show HN: Typedetail.com – featuring Apple's new typeface San Francisco

#46

Post by Aloisius »

gpvos wrote: post #24

Can we do away with those s-t ligatures please? They're visually disturbing and serve no purpose. In a font for reproducing ancient text, okay. But not in any modern text please.

I don't see an st ligature. I forced ligatures on and off on the Apple supplied font and see none (not even for th or fi):

http://i.imgur.com/O0jYcKF.png

Re: Show HN: Typedetail.com – featuring Apple's new typeface San Francisco

#47

Post by currysausage »

towelguy wrote: post #44
currysausage wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is reminiscent of German industrial typeface DIN [1], which looks stylish in certain contexts (advertising), but arguably too stylish and cold for general use. An OS font will be used for everything from obituaries to love letters. Helvetica is a horrible screen font [2], but, unlike San Francisco, it doesn't impose a certain mood on text. (On the other hand, SF's readability kicks Helvetica's ass, so at the end o…

I think this is a case of https://xkcd.com/915/

But is it? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9597348

Re: Show HN: Typedetail.com – featuring Apple's new typeface San Francisco

#48

Post by abrowne »

cpr wrote: post #27

Is it OK to say the emperor has no clothes? I think this is an ugly, clumsy typeface, designed primarily for legibility in a particular small application (the watch). Now it's now rumored to be destined as the system font in 10.11. Going from graceful, readable Lucida to ok-only-in-Retina-but-even-then-hard-to-read-and-overused Helvetica to this new San Francisco is just plain frustrating. Maybe readability trumps ta…

San Francisco is at least more readable than Helvetica Neue. Lucida is gone, but it can't get much worse than it is now.

Re: Show HN: Typedetail.com – featuring Apple's new typeface San Francisco

#49

Post by Aloisius »

madeofpalk wrote: post #13
themartorana wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it common for type faces to be so almost completely similar? SF looks nearly identical to FF DIN to my untrained eye, but even with tiny adjustments, it's bit more than inspired by. In so many industries we talk about here there would already have been a stream of C&D letters and injunctions would be filed in court.

That is the one part about typography that has always confused me - San Francisco is clearly a variation of FF DIN. Can you buy a 'licenses' to use and make your own variation of a typeface?

From a copyright standpoint in the US, you can copy the glyph outlines of fonts (usually some form of bezier curve or in some cases bitmap) without violating copyright. They are completely uncopyrightable.

Most fonts though (TrueType and OpenType) have a hinting language in them which is code and it is copyrightable since it is computer software. This means you can't just copy DIN font files themselves and distribute them freely without permission.

You can however take the outlines from the font, recreate the hints manually and then distribute it.

That said, there are such things as design patents and of course, trademarks. Design patents aren't used too much, but do protect the design itself. Trademarks of course allow you to protect the name.

Re: Show HN: Typedetail.com – featuring Apple's new typeface San Francisco

#50

Post by fuzz_junket »

cpr wrote: post #27

Is it OK to say the emperor has no clothes? I think this is an ugly, clumsy typeface, designed primarily for legibility in a particular small application (the watch). Now it's now rumored to be destined as the system font in 10.11. Going from graceful, readable Lucida to ok-only-in-Retina-but-even-then-hard-to-read-and-overused Helvetica to this new San Francisco is just plain frustrating. Maybe readability trumps ta…

I'm with you, I think it's hideous. And it's not, as another commenter wrote, just the fact that we're seeing a new font replacing an old one in a particular context. I haven't seen this new font in the wild — just on the spec page — and I still thought "Surely no-one's putting their name to this…"
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