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Public Sans – A strong, neutral typeface

public-sans.digital.gov

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Re: Public Sans – A strong, neutral typeface

#51

Post by MadameMinty »

jstummbillig wrote: post #14
sneela wrote: post #8

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 readin…

Shoutout to Atkinson Hyperlegible Next, designed for the Braille Institut having excellent glyph differentiation ("Next" with variable weight) https://fonts.google.com/specimen/Atkinson+Hyperlegible+Next

I'm extremely picky and Atkinson Hyperlegible was my favorite variable-width font. Never knew there's a "Next", so +

Re: Public Sans – A strong, neutral typeface

#55

Post by rpastuszak »

sdoering wrote: post #28
smarx007 wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IBM Plex is very good. Recently, I have been enjoying https://rsms.me/inter/ for interfaces a bit more (with ss02 for body and ss02+tnum for tables activated).

Nice. Inter even has "U+1E9E" "Latin Capital Letter Sharp S" and two lower case sharp s variants as well.

Is U+1E9E used for anything besides ALLCAPS text?

Re: Public Sans – A strong, neutral typeface

#56

Post by Muromec »

1f60c wrote: post #6
OhMeadhbh wrote: post #2

Isn't this from the people who hate Calibri?

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.

I googled Instrument Serif and google fonts page is telling me something with it's choice of lorem ipsum https://fonts.google.com/specimen/Instrument+Serif

Re: Public Sans – A strong, neutral typeface

#57

Post by dheera »

tootie wrote: post #30
ronbenton wrote: post #21

anything on digital.gov is at best on life support given 18F was disbanded and much of the government digital service efforts have been neglected

The Secretary of State recently decreed that sans serif fonts were woke and mandated all communications use Times New Roman.

Times New Roman is the worst serif font they could have picked.

Re: Public Sans – A strong, neutral typeface

#58

Post by airstrike »

deaux wrote: post #35
smarx007 wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IBM Plex is very good. Recently, I have been enjoying https://rsms.me/inter/ for interfaces a bit more (with ss02 for body and ss02+tnum for tables activated).

Hasn't Inter been the default tech font for the last 5 years or so by virtue of being the default font in Figma? The Times New Roman of UI.

I think you have it the other way around.

It's not used because it's the default font in Figma.

It's the fact that it's the best modern alternative to Helvetica, making it universally useful and therefore the default in Figma.

Incidentally, I'll forever mourn that the designers didn't choose to go with a glyph for "1" that is closer to the one in Helvetica.

Re: Public Sans – A strong, neutral typeface

#59

Post by rpastuszak »

nicbou wrote: post #38
tootie wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Secretary of State recently decreed that sans serif fonts were woke and mandated all communications use Times New Roman.

I thought it was a joke, then I checked. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/dec/10/trump-times-... The quote is milder and the "woke" bit was added by others, but the context is essentially correct. In an interview, the font's creator took it as a compliment and was a good sport about it.

I'd say “wasteful” diversity move == woke in this context, not sure if that's milder. Just another distraction thrown at us to keep us at each other's throats. (+ keeping better alignment with the carrot man's branding)

Psychoanalysing politicians aside, serif fonts used to be considered more legible, but that doesn't hold any more that much (e.g. much of research shows that people tend to underestimate familiarity when assessing legibility).

Re: Public Sans – A strong, neutral typeface

#60

Post by Ethan_Barry »

dheera wrote: post #57
tootie wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Secretary of State recently decreed that sans serif fonts were woke and mandated all communications use Times New Roman.

Times New Roman is the worst serif font they could have picked.

To be fair, it's replacing Calibri, so it's still an improvement. We should just use Garamond or Caslon for everything, but that'll never happen. :(
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