7 ms·
I don't like the kerning on San Francisco. It's too common to have wider than normal spaces between characters to the point of being distracting. Maybe that's g
by htk 11y ago
I don't like the kerning on San Francisco. It's too common to have wider than normal spaces between characters to the point of being distracting. Maybe that's good to read randomly generated strings of text, but on actual words the shape of the word is the first hint to the brain when trying to read it, before the individual characters, and if that shape is compromised by wider than expected spaces, reading flow is affected.
- aaronbrethorst 11y agoThat's funny, I loathe Helvetica's keming, and think that San Francisco's is much improved. I can always distinguish 'rn' from 'm' in the new font.
- Zelphyr 11y agoI see what you did there. ;)
- aaronbrethorst 11y agoI was hoping someone would catch that :)
- Rygu 11y agoWhat do you rnean?
- aaronbrethorst 11y agoexactly :)
- idonthaveaname 11y agoI had to read that twice. Nicely done!
- Stratoscope 11y agoYou will probably appreciate this - Liz Crain is an artist who does ceramic pieces that are made to look like old rusted cans (oil cans, etc.). Her husband is a retired typesetter, so some of her ceramic "cans" are related to typography. We bought one called Interrobang and immediately commissioned her to do a Keming can: https://www.facebook.com/lizcrainceramics/posts/10205681336890894 https://www.facebook.com/lizcrainceramics/posts/102056813368...
- aaronbrethorst 11y agoAwesome, thanks for sharing!
- goldenkey 11y agoIn all seriousness, why not use a rusted oil can to begin with..?
- Hytosys 11y agoI don't know if it was what she was going for, but the faux-rust really makes it look cartoonish/surreal. I really like it.
- Stratoscope 11y agoAnybody can have an old tin can on their counter. But if it's a fake tin can, that's art!
- rndn 11y agoI agree with that. San Francisco seems optimal for button captions, app names and other more unique, short pieces of texts, but seems sub-optimal for running text.
- jacobolus 11y agoSan Francisco is much better for running text than Helvetica. Lucida Grande is much better for running text than Helvetica. Verdana is much better for running text than Helvetica. Pretty much anything is better for running text than Helvetica. Helvetica is a typeface designed for signage, headings, posters, corporate logos, and the like. For body copy, it’s terrible, because it has a strong boxy/griddy quality to it, many similar looking letters, and proportions which make letter shapes hard to see at small sizes.
- rndn 11y agoHelvetica Neue is not optimal either, especially due to the light weight used in iOS 7-8, but it I find it still acceptable. For my taste San Francisco looks a bit too blocky due to the flattened curves along the vertical axis. It's not bad, but I like Google's Roboto typeface, for example, better.
- FireBeyond 11y agoAgreed. The iOS 9 keyboard just 'looks' unbalanced (tangential to kerning I know, but nonetheless).
- FireBeyond 11y agoAgreed. The iOS 9 keyboard just 'looks' unbalanced (tangential to kerning I know, but nonetheless).
- cpr 11y agoAgree. They clearly have some real-world kerning tuning to do, but I don't know if that will happen given their "look at our perfect new font" campaign. Let's hope the font nerds deep in the bowels of Apple will do the right thing and tune it over time. ("Doing the right thing in the bowels" reminds me of a story an old friend of mine told me years back. He was an Apple fellow by that point, one of a handful, able to work on whatever he wanted. (He was in the printing group, since he came out of Imagen, the TeX project laser printer spin-off, where we both worked.) Anyway, at some point Jobs went off on a rave at a meeting and declared that fax was dead, and they should no longer support faxing in their printer drivers. Chen and crew had no choice but to fold in public, but kept it in anyway, and Job was never the wiser.)