Nebula Sans

[eps]

Little PSA:

a) This is a clone of Whitney, an incredibly beautiful and unique typeface from 2004

b) Whitney was designed by Tobias Frere-Jones

c) He was an equal co-founder of the H&fJ foundry

d) He designed the vast majority of their most famous fonts, including Gotham, Archer and Armada

e) Somehow, for years, Hoefler never did the paperwork to confirm FJ's co-ownership

f) When pressed, he instead kicked FJ out, kept all the fonts and renamed the shop "Hoefler"

Hoefler is an asshole. A free clone of Whitney is the least of what he deserves.

[tobr]

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.

[EmilStenstrom]

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.

[tiffanyh]

While I’d truly love an open source Whitney alternative (and have looked for years for one), this isn’t it.

Nebula has flat terminals, Whitney has angled terminals.

(There’s a lot of other differences but that one effects most letter shapes).

[msla]

It looks like every "designer's font" introduced since the designers went insane over the iPhone.

Anyway, I'd like sans serif fonts more if they were readable, including being able to distinguish Weird Al from Weird AI.

[mmooss]

How do we know that isn't TFJ's story, that Hoefler doesn't have a very different one, and what the truth is?

[jofzar]

I can't recommend this video enough about how digitizing fonts work and how copyright works for fonts. It's short (5 mins) but is so wonderful.

https://youtu.be/J06tluN7rtE

[svantana]

They forgot to add "...in the US". Some jurisdictions have more protection [1]. In practice though, it works as it always does: do what you want, you probably won't get sued, but if you do, it totally sucks - even if you do have the law on your side.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intellectual_property_protecti...

[nikodunk]

Wonderful video, thank you! The one on the linked Nebula page is also great.

It’s funny - I subscribe to Nebula (a “boutique” video platform) and subconsciously have felt these things that are talked about in both videos, but I needed someone to point them out to me for me to consciously notice.

[jofzar]

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}

[mbrezu]

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....

[robin_reala]

You’re not the only one to be fair. I had to point this out to GitHub just last November: https://github.com/primer/css/pull/2680

[Gare]

Not only that, some fonts have a vast number of tweaks available: https://rsms.me/inter/#features

[gorgoiler]

After the Handgloves specimen, the next part of the page is black with tiny writing. My awful eyesight and mobile scrolling priors caused my brain to assume I had reached the bottom of the page and stop scrolling.

Thanks for pointing out, indirectly, that there’s a lot more content than I had assumed!

[amarshall]

Tabular numerics are great! Of course not all fonts implement them.

If only Apple could figure this out and use it for the iOS clock app.

[subscribed]

This is neat, thanks.

Reminds me of how fira code (my favourite font for code) can be adjusted to match the preferences.

[Leptonmaniac]

Ok, it is a font alright. To me, it looks exactly as all the other fonts I have on my OS already, but I guess that's just how it is if you are not in the font bubble.

[gherkinnn]

I am not in *the font bubble*, but can immediately recognise, say, the Guardian by its typography alone.

It can absolutely be a part of a texts character and reducing this entire field to a *bubble* is a feeble attempt at spinning ignorance as a virtue.

[nine_k]

On the screen, in small print, you may not notice the difference between this and, say, Franklin Gothic. But in print the difference is more noticeable, even if not immediately visible without taking a closer look. If you encounter a booklet purported to be form Bank of America set in this typeface instead of Franklin Gothic, it will look very similar but you'll feel that something is slightly off.

[latexr]

Erik Spiekermann is a German typographer who gave a talk called (something to the effect of) “why do we need so many typefaces”. At one point, Erik simply shows a slide with “this is why”, in what is clearly the Marlboro font.

Fonts have different metrics which affect recognisability, legibility, and understanding. There are fonts which evoke a feeling (think heavy metal band), others which are practical (exaggerated letter forms to help dyslexia), and many many many bad fonts too, such as ones with bad kerning which make words like “therapists” read “the rapists” or “morn” read “mom”.

The fonts you have on your computer are all different and have their own strengths and weaknesses which affect you and your perception of what you read, even if you’re unaware of it.

[kissgyorgy]

I'm not into fonts at all either, but this looks like more crispier and more readable that I anything saw before. I don't know exactly why.

[lelandfe]

So this is a free Whitney with some tweaks?

> Source Sans was the perfect foundation for Nebula Sans because it shares many primary characteristics with Whitney SSm, our previous brand typeface

One differing characteristic presumably being requiring payment to Hoefler & Co.

[jofzar]

It looks more like a derivative then a copy/clone.

Their video explains it way further and is worth a watch.suprisingly captivating. (You can select no and view it without paying)

https://nebula.tv/videos/nebula-sans?ref=nebulasans

It's also worth watching this video if you are interested in how this works.

https://youtu.be/J06tluN7rtE

It's a super interesting video on the history of fonts and how digitizing it works.

[risogiraffe]

> One differing characteristic presumably being requiring payment to Hoefler & Co.

* Monotype

[davedx]

“neutral aesthetic”

Subdued, muted and neutral seems to be very much “in” at the moment. On one hand it definitely gives us highly readable, usable interfaces and text. But I do miss the chaos and vibrance of the early web. Modern web is starting to look really washed out.

[code_biologist]

The moment you let the low contrast gremlins out of the cage they start their mischief!

Flat design is the more sucky partner to neutral palettes in current design trends, IMO. I want color too but it's not a clear step towards usability. I think the return of gentle skeumorphism would be a good step for general usability.

[msla]

Sans serif fonts can't distinguish between Weird AI and Weird Al, so I don't know what makes them readable.

[anotheryou]

Actually good comparison in the video: https://i.imgur.com/jSTJixC.png

Sadly to me Wittney feels clean yet coherent, Nebula Sans feels characterless like a UI thrown together without any real font choice made yet.

[sen]

That seems like a lot of marketing effort for “we took an existing font and stretched some bits”?

[delta_p_delta_x]

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 pay for. I don't like the vast majority of SIL Open Font Licence type faces, with a handful of exceptions. Most of them have glyphs that are an absolute eyesore, are weighted, sized, hinted, and kerned terribly, don't have any character whatsoever (they're all copies of copies of copies of Helvetica) and don't encode nearly enough glyphs/combining marks in Unicode.

Hint: if I can't type IAST/ISO 15919 without tofu showing up, then the font doesn't have enough Latin glyphs.

The majority of digital fonts are either not hinted at all (which makes them look like crap on low – medium resolution monitors), or appear to be hinted on and for macOS, which doesn't have sub-pixel anti-aliasing, but rather greyscale (i.e. full-pixel) AA. The result looks quite bad on Windows and Linux. It looks bad on macOS in monitors with lower pixel density, too.

I will gladly pay for a well-designed typeface (or by proxy, pay a font database subscription). The effort that designers have to put in to design something new from complete scratch is immense. Designers have to come up with unique glyphs, and then when actually setting up the curves, then have to think about how the typeface will vary along several dimensions: weight, size, display pixel density, print versus display, and so on. It's no wonder that the best fonts cost thousands.

Good fonts that have both character and are immediately legible without being unnecessarily fancy is an extremely fine line to tread and in my opinion only a handful of typefaces have managed to balance all of these through the centuries. Some of my favourites follow.

Sans-serifs include Helvetica, Frutiger, Futura, Myriad, Johnston, Optima, Transport, DIN (and its many variants; my favourite is FF DIN), Ocean Sans, and Segoe UI.

Serifs include Roman-cut (including Trajan), Garamond, Minion, a handful of Didone types, Berkeley Old Style, and Palatino.

[ngrilly]

I also spent some time evaluating a lot of open fonts and I agree that most of them have flaws, especially when it comes to kerning. The exceptions are fonts that have been developed for and are used by very large organizations, such as Public Sans (US government), IBM Plex Sans, Source Sans (Abobe), etc. Then the quality is equivalent (or even better) than what you get from proprietary fonts.

[dvdkon]

Every time I thought about buying a font, I've been put off by the terms.

A few tens of euro for desktop use? Sure. But when that font's supposed to be part of an organisation's identity, I'll need it for web use as well, which can be 10x as expensive. And when I want to e.g. generate invoices, that's even more money again, yearly.

I only work with small clients on things like this, but I've never had anyone willing to pay the money. Free fonts might not be as good, but that's not relevant for me, because paid fonts just aren't an option.

[tmtvl]

My test is simple: does it have a monospace variant and does it support Japanese? If not, then it's worse than IBM Plex.

[nisa]

I agree and I'd like to know what's your take on the Fira font family? I've configured my desktop and browser to use this font and now I can't go back. Subjectively I kind of developed a little crush on that font and I'm interested if it also has technical merit or if I'm just making things up in my mind.

[replete]

I agree the keming is off in places, like the alternates.

[codedokode]

It seems that you have included mostly old fonts as examples. And what is your opinion about free fonts like Roboto, Open Sans or Noto?

[tasuki]

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

[nucleogenesis]

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

[tasuki]

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

[velo_aprx]

Most typefaces all look the same to me... I think I'm typeface blind if there is such a thing. It's all just text to me...

[hnarn]

One of the things that made me interested in fonts was many years ago when I looked up the difference between Arial and Helvetica, and ever since I did that I react every time I see Arial used in print or signage because some of the letters are really awful in comparison. The most obvious difference is probably the capital R which to me looks terrible in Arial.

Here's an image showing some overlay examples: https://i.imgur.com/1sdXiNY.jpeg

[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.

[globular-toast]

Why do the increasing weights also look larger? Also, since they've shown it white on black a few times, aren't fonts supposed to have different weights for black on white vs white on black to compensate for different perceived weight?

[robin_reala]

This is one of the big benefits of variable fonts with a bold axis: you can tweak the optical weight for dark mode without needing a whole new face.

[Tepix]

Looks great! My first impression is the spacing is a bit wide, but that can be adjusted.

[exceptione]

Same, the spacing is a bit odd. I am curious about the rationale, as I think this is not great for longer forms of text.

Of course you can adjust char spacing, but normally font designers will make a condensed variant to make that work for corner cases.

[thm]

No variable format in 2025?

[eqvinox]

> No variable format in 2025?

You're presumably referring to variable fonts, aka multiple master fonts/MMF.

Making a multiple master font is massively more work than discrete variations. The complete total number of MM fonts in existence is a 2- or 3-digit number, out of at least tens of thousands of fonts, if not millions.

Demanding or implying that fonts should be MM in 2025 is just plain out of touch with reality.

[dejongh]

Thanks for posting and commenting. The choice of font is a great way to add aesthetics to text - designers so use this opportunity a lot more IMHO.

[todotask2]

My only wish to to have a font with: - Alt a - single story g - plain upper case I and L - geometric 3 - and a $

Inter is a just slightly bolder by default.

[msla]

I'd like sans serif fonts more if they were readable, including being able to distinguish Weird Al from Weird AI.

[1oooqooq]

yet nother font you cannot discern I l |. into the trash it goes.

[foray1010]

100% agree, I don't understand why it is acceptable, it is very confusing on abbreviation.

[tempodox]

I don't get how they call a font “readable” where the lowercase ell looks way too similar to the uppercase aye. I for one would not use such a font.

[Mond_]

No smallcaps variant? Disappointing honestly.

[anotheryou]

well if they don't need it

[JimRyan]

> We believe in facts, science, and human rights

The font looks ok. This is an off putting sample sentence though. It sounds like a secular, pseudo-liturgical version of the Nicene creed.

[jay_kyburz]

Whats wrong with facts, science, and human rights?

[eqvinox]

It's a font demo, what exactly is the problem? Are you paid to lobby for quick foxes and lazy dogs?

[jonathantf2]

Enter the Snack Zone!

[teamonkey]

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secular_humanism

[graemep]

Their samples sentences also include things such as "We’re assembling a crew for a heist" so maybe not take these things too seriously?