Not every thing on the Internet needs its own font. (I say as the former head of a type foundry.)
Nope, but major brands benefit from their own typeface in numerous ways, so Twitter may need their own typeface.
How so?
Twitter's new font, Chirp, is apparently giving some users headaches
121–130 of 264 posts
Re: Twitter's new font, Chirp, is apparently giving some users headaches
#122It's extremely similar to Roboto, which is how it was rendered for me before the change. So it seems almost like nothing happened.
The difference is quite obvious, at least on Windows. Roboto is narrower, better hinted, has fewer embellishments, got a better consistency ("rhythm") and as a result it's much easier on the eyes. Here, side by side - https://i.imgur.com/tXokROR.png - Roboto at the top, Chirp at the bottom.
It also seems that chirp has unusually short ascenders and larger lobes/bowls. For example the 'h' character looks like a child drew it and much closer to an 'n' than one would expect.
Re: Twitter's new font, Chirp, is apparently giving some users headaches
#123To anyone saying "Users will complain about anything", I'm on a Windows desktop and this is honestly the most unpleasant reading experience I've had on any big website in recent memory. There seems to be an issue with the OS antialiasing that is rendering characters slightly blurry to feel it's not focused, further straining my eyes. Seems to have only been tested on Bay Area Apple devices.
O, no... the o's render square and then round and then square again on xubuntu/chrome... what's up!?!...
Many things seem to change because people need to change things to rationalize their job title. Is that what's going on here?
Re: Twitter's new font, Chirp, is apparently giving some users headaches
#124To anyone saying "Users will complain about anything", I'm on a Windows desktop and this is honestly the most unpleasant reading experience I've had on any big website in recent memory. There seems to be an issue with the OS antialiasing that is rendering characters slightly blurry to feel it's not focused, further straining my eyes. Seems to have only been tested on Bay Area Apple devices.
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Re: Twitter's new font, Chirp, is apparently giving some users headaches
#125Not every thing on the Internet needs its own font. (I say as the former head of a type foundry.)
I'm sure you know this, but for others: This is a cost-saving move. It's always more economical for a company of Twitter's size to develop their own font because 1) Then they don't have to pay per-use licensing fees, which are huge at the billion user scale, and 2) a peculiarity of copyright law means that the actual shapes of the letters aren't actually protectable by copyright -- you can copy an existing font virtu…
They were using built in system fonts on each platform before.
Re: Twitter's new font, Chirp, is apparently giving some users headaches
#126The ‘custom’ font has been identified¹ as Grilli Type GT America ² with minor spacing change and a Twitter logo in the PUA. ¹ https://twitter.com/jeffjose/status/1425626162219286529 ² https://www.grillitype.com/typeface/gt-america
Interestingly that means Twitter text is no longer fully portable. If you copy some text from Twitter, you specifically need Chirp to render it properly or else characters like their special logo character will be broken for all other fonts
Because they're using the "Private Use Area" of the font improperly...
Maybe I'm paranoid but I'm feeling like this is an intentional decision in order to push other fonts/foundries to start adding the Twitter logo as a standard Unicode character. Basically bypassing the need for consensus by just forcing the matter and cementing their logo in typography standards.
Re: Twitter's new font, Chirp, is apparently giving some users headaches
#127The ‘custom’ font has been identified¹ as Grilli Type GT America ² with minor spacing change and a Twitter logo in the PUA. ¹ https://twitter.com/jeffjose/status/1425626162219286529 ² https://www.grillitype.com/typeface/gt-america
Interestingly that means Twitter text is no longer fully portable. If you copy some text from Twitter, you specifically need Chirp to render it properly or else characters like their special logo character will be broken for all other fonts Because they're using the "Private Use Area" of the font improperly... Maybe I'm paranoid but I'm feeling like this is an intentional decision in order to push other fonts/found…
So, the same as literally every other font that uses PUA (which is the majority of icon fonts).
Re: Twitter's new font, Chirp, is apparently giving some users headaches
#128Simple solution, just disable use of custom fonts in browser preferences, to force use of configured system fonts.
Re: Twitter's new font, Chirp, is apparently giving some users headaches
#129Earlier quoted context omitted.
Nope, but major brands benefit from their own typeface in numerous ways, so Twitter may need their own typeface.
How so?
Branding! And licensing costs, design, UI consistency, obvious reasons covered by Apple and Google when they updated their platforms to use them.
Re: Twitter's new font, Chirp, is apparently giving some users headaches
#130Earlier quoted context omitted.
Nope, but major brands benefit from their own typeface in numerous ways, so Twitter may need their own typeface.
How so?
Primarily, any license fees your don't have to pay for billions of per-use occurrences is money saved. In Twitter's case: that's a lot of money.
But there's of course also the whole "Your honor, as the evidence makes plain, this content/communication is claimed to have originated on Twitter, but does not use our official typeface. We move to dismiss this case/be awarded damages based on the fact that we were not part of this particular incident", paired with "Your honor, as the evidence makes plain, this content uses our proprietary font, but did not originate at twitter. We move to dismiss this case because we were not involved/be awarded damages on the basis us defamation and will be filing a counter-suit for impersonation".