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Public Sans – A strong, neutral typeface for text or display

public-sans.digital.gov

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Re: Public Sans – A strong, neutral typeface for text or display

#41

Post by eddietejeda »

2bitencryption wrote: post #3

This is so interesting. These modern sites clash really hard with my mental visual of "Government technology." And it led me to this, which is maybe even more interesting: https://federalist.18f.gov/

Yup. I run Federalist at 18F and absolutely love the work, the challenge and colleagues.

We do everything in the open, so feel free to follow our work here: https://github.com/18F/federalist

We also implement the USWDS, which you can follow here: https://github.com/18F/federalist-uswds-jekyll

Let me know if you have any questions!

Re: Public Sans – A strong, neutral typeface for text or display

#42

Post by yborg »

optymizer wrote: post #35
Invictus0 wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why bother having an architect of the Capitol, then? Why bother building government buildings out of stone when wood is cheaper? Appearances matter: would you want to do your taxes with Comic Sans?

The choice was never between Comic Sans or New Government Font. There are a plethora of established sans serif typefaces available under various licenses, as seen on this page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sans_serif_typefaces These have existed well before someone said "let's create Public Sans!". It would be nice to know what the reasoning was. The Github page only goes into the details of how Public Sans…

As a taxpayer I personally am pleased that this is at least one place the government isn't subsidizing some corporation for private gain at my expense. Even if a foundry licensed the font to the government for free, it would be free advertising for that entity. This is one area where I think it makes excellent sense for the government to have done something on its own. The surprise is that it actually looks decent.

Re: Public Sans – A strong, neutral typeface for text or display

#43

Post by karmelapple »

2bitencryption wrote: post #3

This is so interesting. These modern sites clash really hard with my mental visual of "Government technology." And it led me to this, which is maybe even more interesting: https://federalist.18f.gov/

I’ve found Boston’s city websites [1] to have a nice user experience and fantastic branding that ties in not just all the city’s web properties, but also some official postal mail flyers from the city, printed placards and signage at City Hall, and more.

I haven’t noticed this strong of a branding in other cities I’ve lived, but would love to see examples of others.

Boston even maintains its code on github! [2] Their digital department also has a roadmap of what their initiatives are, and it’s communicated in what I think is such an easily digestible manner [3]

Bravo to their digital team!

[1] https://www.boston.gov/

[2] https://github.com/CityOfBoston

[3] https://www.boston.gov/departments/digital-team/digital-team...

Re: Public Sans – A strong, neutral typeface for text or display

#44

Post by ComputerGuru »

boterock wrote: post #20

It is sad that any nice font looks like crap with Windows font rendering.

Windows does not have crap font rendering, Windows has advanced hinting support that varies by typeface and is infinitely customizable. Other operating systems apply a global hinting that typically discards the font designer's own preferences for how the font should look (especially at smaller scales).

Fonts without that manual hinting look like crap on Windows because Windows does not force through its own rendering/hinting/kerning overrides.

And all that is probably besides the point: if you're referring to how the fonts are rendered within a webpage, all the major browsers use their own custom rendering via one (finely tuned) set of parameters and interfaces for macOS/Linux/etc and another (rudimentary) for Windows. And most webfonts do not include any sort of hinting instructions in the payload, so even if the original typeface had manual hinting and would render well on a proper type engine normally, when served over the web even to a browser doing things right it'll still appear horrible.

In case you didn't know, Microsoft is really big on typography, and has commissioned a number of incredibly beautiful typefaces that render perfectly under Windows (and other operating systems).

Re: Public Sans – A strong, neutral typeface for text or display

#45

Post by snide »

beefhash wrote: post #9

I've been wondering why all these new fonts tend to have a strong focus on sans serif font (Fira has no serif variant, Source Serif Pro came later than the other Source fonts). Aren't there a lot of situations (namely, lengthy legal documents) where you'd prefer a serif font before you want a sans serif?

Primarily because they focus on interfaces, not publishing. Serif is traditionally used for legibility of long text. Sans always wins for actual interface design (at least those with some manner of complexity) because it's much less visually distracting when used in a variety of weights and sizes. Interfaces tend to have much more mixed usage so we usually go with sans.

Generally just using the system font is fine for most UI interfaces and the only good reasons to change it are:

1. You have a specific branding style you need to achieve (this is becoming rare) 2. Your interface has pixel perfect user created content where the difference in font to font usage between OSes / Browsers would cause actual breaks in layouts from user to user.

I run into the later often, and so we end up picking a neutral style font like this because it's the closest thing to a generic "system font" like Roboto or San Francisco that has a friendlier license.

Personally I prefer Inter UI https://rsms.me/inter/

Re: Public Sans – A strong, neutral typeface for text or display

#46

Post by marsRoverDev »

cjjuice wrote: post #16

I am really impressed with 18F and how the federal government has really stepped up their game on the digital/open source front. It does make me wonder though if the usage rights of these projects should be restricted to use by US taxpayers though since that is who is ultimately paying for this work.

You could say the same thing about the UK government's equivalent, which I would argue is somewhat of an influence on 18F (though I'm not an insider). They actively open source their work, this being a great example of it: https://github.com/alphagov

I don't think that 18F and US taxpayers lose out on anything by open sourcing this. It builds a lot of good will and they are probably using systems that have been contributed to by others as well.

Re: Public Sans – A strong, neutral typeface for text or display

#47

Post by kevinslashslash »

cjjuice wrote: post #16

I am really impressed with 18F and how the federal government has really stepped up their game on the digital/open source front. It does make me wonder though if the usage rights of these projects should be restricted to use by US taxpayers though since that is who is ultimately paying for this work.

It's a fork of https://github.com/impallari/Libre-Franklin so it'd be a bit against the spirit of things (if even legally permitted) to relicense it to a non-free license. It'd also limit the US taxpayers who wanted to use it in ways that required the full freedom to share with not US taxpayers.

Re: Public Sans – A strong, neutral typeface for text or display

#49

Post by citizenkeen »

legitster wrote: post #23
chrisbrandow wrote: post #6

What is the advantage of this over Open Sans? Is it less encumbered legally? Or are there other advantages? Or is it simply another alternative, which is also great.

The key word is "neutral". The government doesn't set a preference for a specific font or organization.

What is a neutral font?

Re: Public Sans – A strong, neutral typeface for text or display

#50

Post by milquetoastaf »

eddietejeda wrote: post #41
2bitencryption wrote: post #3

This is so interesting. These modern sites clash really hard with my mental visual of "Government technology." And it led me to this, which is maybe even more interesting: https://federalist.18f.gov/

Yup. I run Federalist at 18F and absolutely love the work, the challenge and colleagues. We do everything in the open, so feel free to follow our work here: https://github.com/18F/federalist We also implement the USWDS, which you can follow here: https://github.com/18F/federalist-uswds-jekyll Let me know if you have any questions!

Are y'all hiring :D
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