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GitHub is releasing two open-source fonts: Mona and Hubot Sans

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Re: GitHub is releasing two open-source fonts: Mona and Hubot Sans

#41

Post by dandellion »

a_t48 wrote: post #22
dandellion wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fine, but are there any good reasons to spend resources on fonts? Maybe if they spent less resources on achievements, fonts, etc. and more on reliability they could improve their downtime, which seems to be happening more and more often.

Does money/time spent by designers/front end take away from that towards back end?

Since companies have a limited amount of resources, yes. For example, they could have hired more SREs and less designers, but they didn't.

Re: GitHub is releasing two open-source fonts: Mona and Hubot Sans

#42

Post by zkstefan »

ansgri wrote: post #39
LarsDu88 wrote: post #8

- Time spent on making font: 3 hours - Time spent on making website with cute CG robots to promote font: 5 months, $700,000 in graphic design and engineering labor

These are not only text fonts, but continuously-variable fonts, these can be very labor intensive. Are there other open source variable fonts at all?

I don't disagree that variable fonts require a lot of effort to create but there are hundreds of open source variable fonts available: https://fonts.google.com/?vfonly=true

Re: GitHub is releasing two open-source fonts: Mona and Hubot Sans

#43

Post by dandellion »

usrusr wrote: post #33
dandellion wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fine, but are there any good reasons to spend resources on fonts? Maybe if they spent less resources on achievements, fonts, etc. and more on reliability they could improve their downtime, which seems to be happening more and more often.

The time/investment they spent on their two brand identity typefaces is one side of the equation, the other side is the many, many minutes spent on font decisions in each and every little project in their company if employees are allowed (or maybe even encouraged, it can be quite motivating) to dabble a bit in "visual project identity". And on font licencing awareness training, because those engineer doodles will lik…

You're saying it's better for morale, but do you have any proof? My personal experience says the contrary, the company I work at did the same (albeit it's much smaller than GitHub) and I asked some coworkers what they thought about it, about three of them considered it was a waste of resources, I only remember one saying it was OK, so overall morale went down.

Re: GitHub is releasing two open-source fonts: Mona and Hubot Sans

#44

Post by scyzoryk_xyz »

LarsDu88 wrote: post #8

- Time spent on making font: 3 hours - Time spent on making website with cute CG robots to promote font: 5 months, $700,000 in graphic design and engineering labor

Sorry, but getting a versatile and properly balanced font family to work takes far more than 3 hours; months, years even. If anything those relationships are flipped - surely there are teams at GitHub capable of putting together a website like that in 3 hours.

Re: GitHub is releasing two open-source fonts: Mona and Hubot Sans

#46

Post by petercooper »

slbtty wrote: post #3

I don't understand why they invest(or buy?) fonts?

It's pocket change for GitHub but fantastic branding. Lots of people absolutely love JetBrains Mono, for example, even people who don't use their products.. but they won't forget who JetBrains are. If I were in marketing at a tech company with a huge marketing budget, I'd certainly be considering a typeface in the outreach mix.

See also IBM Plex: https://www.ibm.com/plex/

Re: GitHub is releasing two open-source fonts: Mona and Hubot Sans

#47

Post by advisedwang »

TingPing wrote: post #35
advisedwang wrote: post #26

I wonder if we could train a "Font Copilot" on a bunch of fonts and then claim the output is license free

Fontfaces aren't copywritable in the US.

Interesting. A bit of Google and it seems that although this is technically true, the digital representation of a typeface (ie the font file itself) is copywritable (it is treated like software).

Re: GitHub is releasing two open-source fonts: Mona and Hubot Sans

#48

Post by nwellnhof »

advisedwang wrote: post #47
TingPing wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fontfaces aren't copywritable in the US.

Interesting. A bit of Google and it seems that although this is technically true, the digital representation of a typeface (ie the font file itself) is copywritable (it is treated like software).

TrueType font hinting is Turing-complete, so font files can be considered computer programs.

Re: GitHub is releasing two open-source fonts: Mona and Hubot Sans

#49

Post by xigoi »

somishere wrote: post #23
JaggedJax wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Worse than look exactly alike, they are exactly the same. Pixel for pixel when I compare the examples on the site. Sigh.

There's an issue with the editable / interactive section on Firefox, might be what you're seeing. Otherwise mono is slightly rounder than hubot (look at the "t")

The parent is talking about “I” versus “l”, not Mona versus Hubot.

Re: GitHub is releasing two open-source fonts: Mona and Hubot Sans

#50

Post by xigoi »

b215826 wrote: post #30
samueloph wrote: post #6

Wow, two brand new fonts in 2022 and they still make lowercase "l" look exactly like uppercase "i", I thought we were past that by now :(

Many sans fonts including Helvetica, Inter, Franklin Gothic, etc., do not properly distinguish I and l.

Yes, and that's a mistake.
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