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Nebula Sans

nebulasans.com

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Re: Nebula Sans

#41

Post by delta_p_delta_x »

tobr wrote: post #40
nine_k wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They have a comparison at the bottom of the page. Some letters are dead ringers, some, like "g", differ significantly.

Except for the ”H”, none of them are particularly similar to Whitney. It would have been more interesting to compare the glyphs to Source Sans. Its ”g” is basically identical to this one. EDIT: I created such a comparison. See neighboring subthread.

I'd say this is Source Sans. I'm sorry to trivialise Nebula's effort, but this seems much ado about nothing—they warped Source Sans' glyphs to be metrically compatible with Whitney, renamed the result 'Nebula Sans', got a developer and videographer to produce a whole website and mini-documentary on the matter and called it a day.

Excuse me?

Re: Nebula Sans

#43

Post by delta_p_delta_x »

eps wrote: post #33
EmilStenstrom wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is not a clone. They just matched the *outer dimensions* of Whitney, so that they could swap out their old font and not have to remake all their typography.

Not 1:1, but it has an extremely similar look and feel. In how glyphs are cut and the rhytm of the typeface. Scroll down to "Comparison of Nebula Sans versus Whitney SSm" part of the linked page. I was literally going to complain here that it was a Whitney clone before seeing them mention it on the page.

> the rhytm of the typeface

That's what the parent commenter means by 'They just matched the outer dimensions of Whitney'.

In other words, metrically compatible. To the untrained eye, metrically compatible typefaces all look the same, because they're meant to be swapped between each other. In my view Whitney and Source Sans couldn't be more different. The stroke cuts in Whitney are angled, they're perpendicular in Source Sans. The lowercase 'b', 'e', and 'g' are very different in both fonts.

Re: Nebula Sans

#44

Post by tobr »

huhtenberg wrote: post #38
tobr wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All true, except it’s not really a Whitney clone. It’s Source Sans very lightly adjusted to match Whitney’s metrics. It looks and feels exactly like Source Sans to me. It’s a little strange to present it as a prestigious project with a minisite like this. Source Sans is nice and easy to read, but so overused it’s rarely a good starting point for a visual identity.

https://nebulasans.com/img/handgloves.png

I saw that. Here's a quick similar comparison between Nebula Sans and Source Sans I just whipped up: https://imgur.com/JPwgYkj

Re: Nebula Sans

#46

Post by mbrezu »

jofzar wrote: post #10

I can't believe I am learning of tabular options for fonts from this post... I have always just used a different monospace font for the numbers, didn't realize it was an option that some fonts supported. {font-variant-numeric: tabular-nums}

Look for opentype features in https://practicaltypography.com/. There is more fun stuff, right next to tabular numbers.

And if you want more, there is also https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&opi=8997844....

Re: Nebula Sans

#47

Post by tasuki »

nucleogenesis wrote: post #3

I’m not a huge font nerd but this looks really swanky. Gonna use it as my DE default font for sure. I appreciate the site’s overview and comparisons and such too

In what way are you finding it better than Source Sans?

Re: Nebula Sans

#48

Post by tasuki »

delta_p_delta_x wrote: post #8

All glyphs are indistinguishable from Source Sans. The 'thin'/'light' weights are kerned further apart (and in my opinion, worse) than in Source Sans. Given these, why does this typeface deserve a new name? It is Source Sans, full stop. At least Arial (Helvetica copy) and Segoe UI and Myriad (Frutiger copies) have a handful of distinguishing glyphs. I have a very hot take—with typefaces, you absolutely get what you p…

You seem to know a thing or two about typeface design. What do you think about Alegreya, Playfair, and Ubuntu fonts?

Re: Nebula Sans

#49

Post by codedokode »

It's great to see more freely available fonts. But the site shows examples of a font in an elephant size; this seems to be the font for the main text so it would be nice to see a paragraph in a small size (like 16px, 14px, 12px, 10px). Out of curiosity I did it using Developer Tools in a browser - seems legible.

Re: Nebula Sans

#50

Post by andai »

delta_p_delta_x wrote: post #41
tobr wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except for the ”H”, none of them are particularly similar to Whitney. It would have been more interesting to compare the glyphs to Source Sans. Its ”g” is basically identical to this one. EDIT: I created such a comparison. See neighboring subthread.

I'd say this is Source Sans. I'm sorry to trivialise Nebula's effort, but this seems much ado about nothing—they warped Source Sans' glyphs to be metrically compatible with Whitney, renamed the result 'Nebula Sans', got a developer and videographer to produce a whole website and mini-documentary on the matter and called it a day. Excuse me?

Reminds me of that Bill Gates quote, "I get the laziest programmer to do the hardest job because he'll find an easy way to do it."
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