That practice died out years ago with the rise of browser support for @font-face and the hosted webfont industry. Of course, you'll still encounter legacy sites that assume installed fonts, but no professional designer is going to specify type that way on a new project.
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...
I have a theory that every type family looks ugly when it replaces another one in a familiar context. We become so acclimated to a particular rhythm of strokes and counters that seeing them changed in situ inevitably looks wrong. In time, though, our brains adjust and the new typography comes to look right.
You're right, Helvetica is and was a poor choice for Yosemite, even if you have a retina screen. It's not a screen font. Lucida Grande was a great screen font, but the boldness of it worked much better on 1x screens. With the added fidelity of retina screens, it just looks too strong. Apple probably should let you choose or choose for you depending on your pixel density, but that's not their style and they've always been willing to make compromises in choices for the sake of forward progress.
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'm with you, I think it's hideous. And it's not, as another commenter wrote, just the fact that we're seeing a new font replacing an old one in a particular context. I haven't seen this new font in the wild — just on the spec page — and I still thought "Surely no-one's putting their name to this…"
You're unhappy with the readability of San Francisco? I've heard the opposite from most people who have seen it on the Watch.
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 don't know about San Francisco as I haven't really spent any time reading it. But there's something slightly odd about Roboto, I can't quite put my finger on it but it's like there is slightly too much bulge in some places. Does anyone else get this?
Is it common for type faces to be so almost completely similar? SF looks nearly identical to FF DIN to my untrained eye, but even with tiny adjustments, it's bit more than inspired by.
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.
Another font with very similar character is Malmö Sans (only regular weight though, bold has high stroke contrast) [1]. Typographic details differ (Malmö looks more dynamic than San Francisco due to slanted terminal strokes), but basic forms make it look almost identical to San Francisco at smaller grades.
Maybe I'm just not very observant and/or a philistine but I can't be the only one that can't tell the difference between these fonts without looking very hard. I doubt I would be able to tell at all if you swapped any of those fonts.
I'm postively surprised. I didn't expect this from Apple, but it actually does look good with the Windows font renderer here (Firefox, so I assume DirectWrite), down to at least 9px. The hinting could perhaps be better on a few letters but I expected none care taken whatsoever. Of course, this could be a lucky accident, not sure if Apple did this intentionally. The thin weights seem OK as well, something else that can not always be expected. Looks decent for general use unless Apple prevents that by licensing.
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.
The Apple Watch Design Resources license where the font seems to have originated is pretty strict about using this font:
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.
Ask type professionals: what are good typefaces for spreadsheets (tabular numeric data), onscreen and in print?
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).
If you choose a Opentype typeface with Tabular figures as an option, you could have a high quality typeface that prints out the numbers that are fixed width, but might be significantly more aesthetically considered than standard monospaced font.
Not from the perspective of a type professional, but Tahoma is still very readable down to 8 point, for when you want to see a lot of cells at the same time. I don't find that monospacing is any help in spreadsheets.
This is a ridiculously incomplete sample sheet. Most of the iOS, OS X, and Watch OS users will need to display characters outside the non-accented English alphabet.
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.
It probably doesn't support Japanese, Chinese or Arabic, so mulling over how the alphabet looks on this font seems to be the only reasonable thing to discuss in regards to this font.
There aren't that many fonts that supports 10's of thousands of glyphs and most of those just reuse from a standard set.
I like it. It just looks "right" somehow, and it's more optically dense, so it'll look good on all kinds of screens as well. Picking Helvetica Neue was a bit of a brain fart on Jony's part.
Can we do away with those s-t ligatures please? They're visually disturbing and serve no purpose. In a font for reproducing ancient text, okay. But not in any modern text please.
empressplay|10 years ago
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Francisco_%281984_typeface%...
mortenjorck|10 years ago
professionis|10 years ago
azinman2|10 years ago
namuol|10 years ago
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)
mortenjorck|10 years ago
madeofpalk|10 years ago
cpr|10 years ago
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.
antimagic|10 years ago
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...
mortenjorck|10 years ago
Gracana|10 years ago
justinph|10 years ago
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.
fuzz_junket|10 years ago
cmelbye|10 years ago
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.
abrowne|10 years ago
gonzo41|10 years ago
but good work anyway apple.
timothya|10 years ago
willyt|10 years ago
wodenokoto|10 years ago
themartorana|10 years ago
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.
currysausage|10 years ago
[1] http://www.myfonts.com/fonts/martin-lexelius-core/malmo-sans...
sesutton|10 years ago
jug|10 years ago
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.
Aloisius|10 years ago
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)
hartator|10 years ago
chinathrow|10 years ago
detaro|10 years ago
thanatropism|10 years ago
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).
jamesdelaneyie|10 years ago
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
rz2k|10 years ago
Quanttek|10 years ago
This is in Firefox Developer on Linux with the Infinality font rendering installed.
I'm probably doing something wrong
derrasterpunkt|10 years ago
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
rdancer|10 years ago
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.
Aloisius|10 years ago
Afrikaans, Albanian, Asu, Basque, Bemba, Bena, Bosnian, Catalan, Chiga, Congo Swahili, Cornish, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, Embu, English, Esperanto, Estonian, Faroese, Filipino, Finnish, French, Galician, German, Gusii, Hungarian, Icelandic, Igbo, Indonesian, Irish, Italian, Kabuverdianu, Kalenjin, Kamba, Kikuyu, Kinyarwanda, Latvian, Lithuanian, Luo, Luyia, Machame, Makhuwa-Meetto, Makonde, Malagasy, Malay, Maltese, Manx, Meru, Morisyen, North Ndebele, Norwegian Bokmål, Norwegian Nynorsk, Nyankole, Oromo, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Romansh, Rombo, Rundi, Rwa, Samburu, Sango, Sangu, Sena, Shambala, Shona, Slovak, Slovenian, Soga, Somali, Spanish, Swahili, Swedish, Swiss German, Taita, Teso, Turkish, Turkmen, Vietnamese, Vunjo, Welsh, Yoruba and Zulu
wodenokoto|10 years ago
There aren't that many fonts that supports 10's of thousands of glyphs and most of those just reuse from a standard set.
JohnTHaller|10 years ago
thisisblurry|10 years ago
melted|10 years ago
nblavoie|10 years ago
[deleted]
dimensionzirc|10 years ago
[deleted]
gpvos|10 years ago
Aloisius|10 years ago
http://i.imgur.com/O0jYcKF.png
jamesdelaneyie|10 years ago
nblavoie|10 years ago
izzle49|10 years ago