http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Francisco_%281984_typeface%...
Cool. Another font for web designers to wrongfully assume I have installed on my system.
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Francisco_(2014_typeface)
I think this is an ugly, clumsy typeface, designed primarily for legibility in a particular small application (the watch). Now it's now rumored to be destined as the system font in 10.11.
Going from graceful, readable Lucida to ok-only-in-Retina-but-even-then-hard-to-read-and-overused Helvetica to this new San Francisco is just plain frustrating. Maybe readability trumps taste, but in that case, just go back to Lucida.
Not really. That particular expression (and others like it such as "the elephant in the room" is more to get across the idea that there is an obvious truth staring people in the face and they don't see it / talk about it. I don't know that you can really say that San Francisco is objectively ugly - an opinion that I advance based on the fact that there are an awful lot of people out there that haven't even noticed what font is being used. If it was a truly ugly font, you would have every second post about the Apple Watch talking about how ugly the text is...
It’s not that simple.
(On the other hand, SF's readability kicks Helvetica's ass, so at the end of the day, I do welcome this change. But Apple could do so much better.)
[1] FF DIN, an adaption for use in graphic design: https://www.myfonts.com/fonts/fontfont/ff-din/
[2] See e.g. http://spiekermann.com/en/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/helveti...
San Francisco as a system font in OS X on a retina screen is very good, even if the current hacked implementation has it's quirks. The thinner stroke intersections are somewhat reminiscent of ink traps. I'm not certain, but I'd be willing to bet it has to do with sub-pixel anti-aliasing and not making the stroke intersections look too heavy. To my eye, the taller but symmetrical bowls look really good and help keep an even cadence between all the vertical forms. The wide range of weights is also really useful. Maybe Apple will put that to use in 10.11 for retina and non-retina screens.
I think it's quite a beautiful typeface, and I'm glad they're expanding its usage to their new keyboards and iOS/OS X. I think it will work out great for them.
I never liked Helvetica Neue in user interfaces so I'm happy to soon (hopefully) see it gone from iOS.
Edit: OK, so it's only to be used by either Apple or Apple apps.
Limited License. Subject to the terms of this License, you may use the Apple Font solely for purposes of design and development of applications for the Apple Watch. The foregoing right includes the right to show the Apple Font in screen shots, images or mock-ups of an Apple Watch application.
https://developer.apple.com/watchkit/ (after clicking on Apple Watch Design Resources)
Onscreen I've been switching Excel's default to Consolas, which is more compact yet more readable. Other programs have unchangeable defaults (but they rely more on fix-width, too).
Here's some typefaces that are for the most part, only numbers, that I think might look rather nice for just tabbed numerical data: http://www.typography.com/fonts/numbers/inside/claimcheck http://www.typography.com/fonts/numbers/inside/greenback
This is in Firefox Developer on Linux with the Infinality font rendering installed.
I'm probably doing something wrong
https://developer.apple.com/watch/human-interface-guidelines...
The rounded version is missing in the package, though.
The whole font is in the iOS-Simulator[1], but they don't seem to be usable. They have a ".San Fransico …" name.
[1] https://twitter.com/chockenberry/status/534865299234127872
Nerding out about minute-to-nonexistent differences from Helvetica is cute, but how will it actually look in real-life application?! Way to miss the point.
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There aren't that many fonts that supports 10's of thousands of glyphs and most of those just reuse from a standard set.
In so many industries we talk about here there would already have been a stream of C&D letters and injunctions would be filed in court.
[1] http://www.myfonts.com/fonts/martin-lexelius-core/malmo-sans...
Typography is an extremely constrained design space with tons of little details and small differences. If you constrain yourself to readable type suitable for use on screen the space gets smaller, still. That’s why I love it. You don’t have to – but you should also then probably not offer up your opinion on fonts (which you didn’t, but many people do, in that same sneering and really annoying way some people talk about contemporary art, for example).
Instead, it feels like something I'd expect to come with a redesign to the OS itself to make it all a bit more brutalist-feeling; maybe something that relies on Gestalt windows-menus-and-pointers less, and a narrative interface like Siri more. A HAL9000 chat-transcript.
To me, it looks really great as a system font.
The reason is that it is legible. That legibility comes thru the junk on my glasses and the fact that my prescription is out of date so things are just slightly blurry. Yes, I need new glasses.
But that's a proxy for people who don't see as well. Apple's serving everybody. And not all of us can see so good.
There's an argument that this line of thinking will take Apple down the path of mediocrity-- lowest common denominator and all that. But hopefully it's only an option and they continue to use the "Best" font (of which I'm not the best judge) for the system.
And then make San Francisco an option as a system font in accessibility.
And yes, more stuff to download to make your experience nicer to have design and heterogeneity in our lives.
But if it is a personal dislike and other people are fans, I can't object. It wouldn't be the first time I disliked an Apple initiative that turned out to be very successful.
I think, if the font didn't literally have to be continuously zoomed in a lot of places, they would just lose the overemphasis at larger sizes.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adobe_Systems,_Inc._v._Souther....
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intellectual_property_protecti...
There's a similar situation with clothing, IIRC, which explains the prevalence of brand logos.
IANAL, obviously.
Most fonts though (TrueType and OpenType) have a hinting language in them which is code and it is copyrightable since it is computer software. This means you can't just copy DIN font files themselves and distribute them freely without permission.
You can however take the outlines from the font, recreate the hints manually and then distribute it.
That said, there are such things as design patents and of course, trademarks. Design patents aren't used too much, but do protect the design itself. Trademarks of course allow you to protect the name.
Would Apple have paid to modify and use FF DIN in their devices?
I mean, if you think something is not interesting why add to that uninterestingness by saying something that itself is so utterly uninteresting.
I’m really a fan of amateur thinking and talking about art because I am also quite clueless about art (contemporary and all other art), so I think it’s great to talk about it even if you are clueless, but I do try to avoid clichés and if I don’t get something I assume that I either don’t know the context (context does tremendous things to elevate all human endeavors and can make something that seems superficially boring or worthless very interesting) or that there really is nothing to it – but I don’t really possess the ability to judge what’s what.
I think that’s a very reasonable assumption to make when looking at contemporary art and you are clueless about art – and you also avoid dealing in clichés as a result.
And those brains are pretty predictable; you can figure out what someone's "tastes" will be from their DNA and formative experience far in advance of actually exposing them to the stimuli in question.
Or, to put it another way, "human aesthetics are an arbitrary result; they 'could have' been anything. That doesn't mean you should ignore them—your arbitrary path-dependent values are literally all you are."
(This is just the aesthetics interpretation of the LessWrong http://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Metaethics_sequence, if you're wondering.)
