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Why are tech companies making custom typefaces?

arun.is

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Re: Why are tech companies making custom typefaces?

#51

Post by bryanrasmussen »

JustSomeNobody wrote: post #17
bryanrasmussen wrote: post #5

>I can’t help but feel that some of these companies wanted a >custom typeface simply because that’s what everyone else is >doing. This cargo cult mentality that is so prevalent in >design is at best wasteful and at worst illegal. Illegal?!? I'm going to need to see some work on this part. I couldn't find anything in the article that seemed to directly support the assertion. on edit: formatting

Yeah, the author needs to either remove that or clarify that point. That being said, I think the author means that all of these new type faces are very similar and so they may be infringing. Or that the companies want a familiar type face but don't want to pay for it, so they commission a look-a-like. But, that's just a very large grasp on my part from reading the article.

perhaps it's just me but I always take illegal to mean criminally liable, if they meant civil liabilities I guess maybe eh, but it still needs some clarification.

Re: Why are tech companies making custom typefaces?

#53

Post by ardy42 »

> Why are tech companies making custom typefaces?

Because they hate me. I disable font smoothing on my machines. Custom typefaces usually have poor hinting, which means they look terrible without smoothing (e.g. inconstant line thickness and inconsistent spacing).

The fonts that ship with Windows and Mac OS are wonderfully hinted, and appear crisp and clean without font smoothing. I curse the day web fonts were invented and gave the industry bad excuses not to use them.

Google is the absolute worst here. They use custom fonts heavily now, and somehow they're not even blockable with the Font Blocker extension (https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/font-blocker/knpga...).

Re: Why are tech companies making custom typefaces?

#54

Post by ramraj07 »

ardy42 wrote: post #53

> Why are tech companies making custom typefaces? Because they hate me. I disable font smoothing on my machines. Custom typefaces usually have poor hinting, which means they look terrible without smoothing (e.g. inconstant line thickness and inconsistent spacing). The fonts that ship with Windows and Mac OS are wonderfully hinted, and appear crisp and clean without font smoothing. I curse the day web fonts were inven…

Do you still use a 1024 x 768 monitor or what?

Re: Why are tech companies making custom typefaces?

#55

Post by Klover »

phkahler wrote: post #46
iiv wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just a nitpick: open source does not mean free to use.

Substitute free to use and the statement still hold. I'm actually in favor of sites not specifying any fonts at all - only things like size, bold, italic. Let the user set a font preference in their web browser to something the find easy to read. No designer can say what is pleasing to everyone and never will. This whole thing is really just self gratification for designers.

That’s fine. It’s just a tick in Firefox to do so. Yesterday I made a readme intended for some Windows friends. Just a simple single html page. I set it to “Segoe UI”,sans-serif so it looks more like a Windows manual. If someone opens it on a mobile device or a Mac somehow, then it still looks fine. It mostly just avoids people seeing Times New Roman or Arial, which I don’t need A/B testing for to know is not as nice to look at or doesn’t look very Windows like.

Unless you use Chrome, you can also go to the reader mode to avoid all the CSS. Plenty of options for you!

Re: Why are tech companies making custom typefaces?

#56

Post by zuzun »

michaelt wrote: post #40
Rotten194 wrote: post #2

I don't think most tech companies actually want a completely custom, radically new typeface. They want a designer to trace Helvetica so they don't have to pay licensing fees.

The article contains an image [1] showing several tech-company-funded fonts side-by-side. The fonts have some differences, but I'd have to agree with you the changes are so subtle it's hard to believe they resulted from an attempt to make a _radically_ new typeface. [1] https://www.arun.is/blog/custom-typefaces/unique_typefaces_m...

I'd say Netflix Sans goes for the Circular look, Cereal tries to be a Proxima Nova, San Francisco is cross between Roboto and DIN and Roboto itself is a modern Univers.

Re: Why are tech companies making custom typefaces?

#57

Post by aczerepinski »

AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #30
wongarsu wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some people spend a lot of time color coordinating their clothes, some just wear whatever. Some people try to make everything they write look beautiful while making it easier to read, some people just type the letters and don't care. Good typography can make a massive difference to the presentation of text. To some people that makes it worth the effort

Based on the state of the web in 2018, with it's pop-ups in the middle of the page, cookie warning, laggy scrolling, and image pop-in that moves what you're reading, I find it very difficult to believe that that many people actually care much about the presentation of text.

The fact that marketers get to make their contributions to a website doesn't negate that there's a designer involved who probably cares about typography, color, space, etc.

Re: Why are tech companies making custom typefaces?

#58

Post by ardy42 »

ramraj07 wrote: post #54
ardy42 wrote: post #53

> Why are tech companies making custom typefaces? Because they hate me. I disable font smoothing on my machines. Custom typefaces usually have poor hinting, which means they look terrible without smoothing (e.g. inconstant line thickness and inconsistent spacing). The fonts that ship with Windows and Mac OS are wonderfully hinted, and appear crisp and clean without font smoothing. I curse the day web fonts were inven…

Do you still use a 1024 x 768 monitor or what?

> Do you still use a 1024 x 768 monitor or what?

No, I have some nice, large 16:10 monitors.

However, that brings up a good point: if you're designing your stuff to only look good on a MacBook's retina display, you're doing it wrong.

Re: Why are tech companies making custom typefaces?

#59

Post by bovermyer »

rangibaby wrote: post #42

Font licensing is rent-seeking bullshit on the level of "Mickey Mouse" copyright extensions and I'm surprised the big foundries have managed to convince everyone that they need to pay for typefaces, which are explicitly copyright-free in every major jurisdiction.

Just out of curiosity, how would you suggest that foundries make money?

Re: Why are tech companies making custom typefaces?

#60

Post by FPGAhacker »

ramraj07 wrote: post #54
ardy42 wrote: post #53

> Why are tech companies making custom typefaces? Because they hate me. I disable font smoothing on my machines. Custom typefaces usually have poor hinting, which means they look terrible without smoothing (e.g. inconstant line thickness and inconsistent spacing). The fonts that ship with Windows and Mac OS are wonderfully hinted, and appear crisp and clean without font smoothing. I curse the day web fonts were inven…

Do you still use a 1024 x 768 monitor or what?

Fonts look pretty bad on my monitors at work in some apps (putty is giving me grief at the moment). x1080 is pretty common native, and is not too far off from 768.

The right font matters a lot to me. I like thin sans serif...always looking for a font that resembles what I saw on an old Apollo workstation (if I recall correctly, and I probably don’t).

Source Code Pro seems to be the best I’ve found, but I can’t get it to look right in putty.

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