Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Nokia Pure: Nokia's New Official Font

brandbook.nokia.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 82 posts

Re: Nokia Pure: Nokia's New Official Font

#51

Post by rbanffy »

tptacek wrote: post #49
rbanffy wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My comment was mostly about focus. Nokia has one single problem: they need to build phones people actually want. They have to develop the phones people will want in 2012 right now so they are shipping and working very well (Apple's iPhone has somewhat raised expectations) in 2012. Elop used the burning platform metaphor. If it's burning, the sole focus of the whole company should be on building a new one. A new corpo…

It doesn't.

Then why do it? If that's not a focus problem, I don't know what would be.

Re: Nokia Pure: Nokia's New Official Font

#52

Post by chc »

rbanffy wrote: post #45
chc wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is that relevant? Because it doesn't sound like it has anything to do with Nokia's new typeface.

It has with his faith in Nokia's sound strategy and competent management. I am implying Nokia has a focus problem, he says it's normal and perfectly sane. If it is, he would be willing to bet on the company's recovery.

He didn't even mention the soundness of Nokia's strategy or the competence of their management. What he said is the same thing I'm saying: I don't see what any of the stuff you're talking about here (Windows Phone 7, the company's overall strategy, the company's management) has to do with the Nokia Pure typeface. What does a font have to do with the company's focus? Are you suggesting they should have put Bruno Maag to work on OS development and instead they wasted his talent on type design?

Re: Nokia Pure: Nokia's New Official Font

#53

Post by tptacek »

rbanffy wrote: post #51
tptacek wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn't.

Then why do it? If that's not a focus problem, I don't know what would be.

Because whether or not you like the fact that they chose WP7, they still have to publish many thousands of slicks this year, and they still have to have a website, and it may be worth it to have a coherent visual identity across all of them.

Your take on this baffles me. It's like you think the only functions in a multi-billion dollar company are the ones nerds care about.

The Bengals have crappy-looking helmets. They are also a crappy team. They should fix the helmets. Also the team. But the two don't really have a lot to do with each other; the Bengels still bring in millions of dollars, despite losing all the time. Meanwhile, let's make sure we're talking about the helmets when we mean to talk about the helmets, and the teams when we mean to talk about the teams. Because people make fun of people who judge football teams by their helmets.

Re: Nokia Pure: Nokia's New Official Font

#54

Post by tptacek »

moondowner wrote: post #31

Why? I really liked (and still like) the one they used up until now [1]. It looked fancy, it was _really_ distinctive, and it had a great readable font for devices (e.g. screenshot [2]). What more do you need from a typeface? P.S. Doesn't this new typeface somehow remind you of Windows Phone 7's one? [1] http://spiekermann.com/en/nokia-sans-character/ [2] http://www.flickr.com/photos/21709201@N00/4263893860/

I'm no expert, but:

* Spiekermann's face is distinctive, but also dated; Spiekermann himself draws a comparison to Rotis in the PDF spec for the face.

* The face is complicated. Look towards the back of spec book for whole pages set in it. It draws a bit of attention to itself.

* In the same vein: it's complicated enough to require a serif and "wide" variation to make it work in all the settings Nokia needs type. Don't underestimate how annoying that may have been for people working at Nokia. One company I worked with ditched an identity that used Mrs. Eaves and Futura (which looked awesome, I thought) because no normal person could make a document look good in it.

The new face is all these things in reverse:

* It's trendy (yeah, to the point of being boring)

* It's simple

* It's all-purpose

And sure, at the end of the day, maybe they just wanted to refresh for the hell of it.

Also: remember that the cost to re-do all their docs in a new visual style will probably dwarf the cost of getting a face commissioned. If they were going to refresh the identity anyways (that's just something companies do once or twice every decade), and the cost of a Dalton Maag typeface is a tiny part of that, why not?

Re: Nokia Pure: Nokia's New Official Font

#56

Post by dreww »

gvb wrote: post #33
kwantam wrote: post #6

Chrome 9.0.597.83 beta for Linux does not do a very good job with the kerning on that page. Not sure if it's bad hinting or just poor rendering, though.

That is because you are looking at Arial or sans-serif, not at "Nokia Pure Text"... assuming you did not download and install the font on your computer. Check the .css: font-family: 'Nokia Pure Text', Arial, sans-serif; The only thing that is "Nokia Pure" on the web page is the .gif images of the sample text. This is an insurmountable problem with branded fonts; they only work if you load the branded font on every co…

did you tumble out of a time machine from 1999?

Re: Nokia Pure: Nokia's New Official Font

#57

Post by naner »

cromulent wrote: post #35

And the links for download: http://brandbook.nokia.com/other_files/Brand_Book_v2.2_2011/... http://brandbook.nokia.com/other_files/Brand_Book_v2.2_2011/... As posted here: http://craig.dubculture.co.nz/blog/2011/03/26/putting-nokias...

What are the license terms?

Re: Nokia Pure: Nokia's New Official Font

#59

Post by rbanffy »

tptacek wrote: post #53
rbanffy wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then why do it? If that's not a focus problem, I don't know what would be.

Because whether or not you like the fact that they chose WP7, they still have to publish many thousands of slicks this year, and they still have to have a website, and it may be worth it to have a coherent visual identity across all of them. Your take on this baffles me. It's like you think the only functions in a multi-billion dollar company are the ones nerds care about. The Bengals have crappy-looking helmets. The…

> Because whether or not you like the fact that they chose WP7

Nice straw man. My argument is platform neutral. Nokia should focus on building phones it can sell. I would question their sanity even if they had chosen Android.

> It's like you think the only functions in a multi-billion dollar company are the ones nerds care about.

No. Their only function is to create value for shareholders.

Your analogy is flawed. Nokia has not a visual identity (or helmet) problem - quite the contrary - their phones look good, their printed materials and website look good. They have a product roadmap problem. S60 seems inadequate for current smartphone standards, which is tragic, because all things point to a smartphone-only market in a couple years. S40 is even more doomed in that scenario and MeeGo was going nowhere. They chose to go with WP7 and it will be hard enough to pull that off (it would be had they chosen Android, WebOS, MiraclePhoneOS or a mutant Symbian from an alternate future).

And yet, they decide to change their visual identity.

It's like Twitter, in the fail-whale days, deciding their problem was their logo and changing it to a green octopus instead of solving their scaling problem. Because, after all, cool logos are what sells stuff.

Re: Nokia Pure: Nokia's New Official Font

#60

Post by rbanffy »

chc wrote: post #52
rbanffy wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It has with his faith in Nokia's sound strategy and competent management. I am implying Nokia has a focus problem, he says it's normal and perfectly sane. If it is, he would be willing to bet on the company's recovery.

He didn't even mention the soundness of Nokia's strategy or the competence of their management. What he said is the same thing I'm saying: I don't see what any of the stuff you're talking about here (Windows Phone 7, the company's overall strategy, the company's management) has to do with the Nokia Pure typeface. What does a font have to do with the company's focus? Are you suggesting they should have put Bruno Maag…

> He didn't even mention the soundness of Nokia's strategy or the competence of their management

I assumed that was implied in the defense of the visual identity reformulation.

> I don't see what (...) Windows Phone 7, the company's overall strategy, the company's management has to do with the Nokia Pure typeface.

Nothing and that's the point. Why waste focus on a visual identity overhaul? Was it broken?

> Are you suggesting they should have put Bruno Maag to work on OS development

This is a false dichotomy. Why hire Bruno Maag in the first place when they, yes, need to hire developers (hardware and software) so they can make phones they can sell?

Post reply on HN