Public Sans – A strong, neutral typeface • Hacker News Board

No, looks like it was started late in Obama's second term. As for the current guys, they would probably use Instrument Serif for body text if they could.

Re: Public Sans – A strong, neutral typeface

#7

Post by joallard » Tue, Dec 30, 2025, 3:10 PM UTC

Weirdly, it reminds me of Aptos, the new default font in Microsoft products.

Re: Public Sans – A strong, neutral typeface

#8

Post by sneela » Tue, Dec 30, 2025, 3:14 PM UTC

As much as I appreciate the tiny serif for lowercase L and numeral 1 to differentiate l I and 1, I am not the biggest fan of the capital I glyph without the horizontal serifs. It's my biggest design gripe with most sans-serif fonts as it makes it FRUSTRATINGLY difficult to differentiate when looking at words by themselves.

Is that lota or Iota? Is that iodestone or lodestone? Both real examples where I fumbled reading them -- once in front of a class :)

This is why my favorite sans-serif typeface has been (and will always be) IBM Plex Sans [1]. It's an open font [2]. I have all my laptops and desktops set to using the IBM Plex typefaces, including browser overrides. If only there were a way to do it system-wide on my Android phone...

[1]: https://www.ibm.com/plex/

[2]: https://github.com/IBM/plex/blob/master/LICENSE.txt

Preview: https://fonts.google.com/specimen/IBM+Plex+Sans?preview.text...

Re: Public Sans – A strong, neutral typeface

#9

Post by skibidithink » Tue, Dec 30, 2025, 3:15 PM UTC

Are there any designers here who can explain when the differences between Public Sans and Roboto Sans and when to use one or the other?

Re: Public Sans – A strong, neutral typeface

#10

Post by maxloh » Tue, Dec 30, 2025, 3:19 PM UTC

joallard wrote: post #7

Weirdly, it reminds me of Aptos, the new default font in Microsoft products.

To clarify, it is the default font for office documents, not the default UI font.