16 ms·

Airbnb's new typeface

157 points by welder 8y ago

freese 8y ago
This is really cool, and I love the name and its connection to Airbnb founding story
iblo66 8y ago
I find it profoundly stupid for Airbnb to have their own typeface. It's like they have lots of designers around and have to keep them busy with something. Well at least they did not give them the usual entertainment for bored designers: redesigning stuff that does not need a redesign.
- huac 8y ago
  Creating a typeface which you own is cheaper than licensing a third-party typeface, at scale.
  - CharlesW 8y ago
    There are lots of really great open source typefaces. In my experience, these choice tend to be more about branding than cost savings (not that cost savings isn't a nice potential benefit).
  - kossae 8y ago
    This is likely the reason. I forget the article/post, but I recall reading about this on HN a while back. Basically the licensing for fonts across all platforms can become very costly, so developing a typeface in house becomes an appealing choice once your designs are in front of X number of people (commercial/web/print/etc).
    - amptorn 8y ago
      This is definitely the reason IBM invented Plex -- they have designers aplenty after the IBM Design initiative a few years back and they discovered that unfortunately Helvetica Neue costs money.
  - phkahler 8y ago
    >> Creating a typeface which you own is cheaper than licensing a third-party typeface, at scale. The cheapest fonts are the ones installed on a users system. Web sites and apps do not need to include fonts at all. In fact it's easy to argue that the users should be selecting the fonts on their devices in most cases.
    - mozumder 8y ago
      Never let the user control your brand. System fonts should always be thrown away. Every company web site & app needs to include their own font. Otherwise, you become a commodity, and you can be replaced by your competitors. Business is about being different from competitors, not the same. And people buy things that look good. Companies that have crappy branding lose money, because they lose customers to other companies.
      - jadedhacker 8y ago
        If your major differentiating factor is mainly branding, you are already a commodity. Customers will often use shitty looking products if there's something in it for them.
        ggg9990 8y ago
        Not for a network effect business. A network effect business doesn’t need a strong advantage or even any advantage if the network is strong enough. Note that eBay has barely changed in 20 years yet is still the only place to go to get Hamburglar sunglasses or whatever.
        jadedhacker 8y ago
        Good point.
  - 6cd6beb 8y ago
    If they just said that I'd respect it more than I do after 1500 words of self aggrandizing nonsense about how no other typeface reflects "their brand's personality". This is why people make fun of silicon valley. Your new font isn't changing the world and it's not adding value to anything. Certainly not adding value equal to its cost.
- m_ke 8y ago
  It probably took a week just to put together this post. I bet it's great for recruiting though. Kind of like google letting researchers waste half their time writing papers and going to conferences.
  - manigandham 8y ago
    Recruiting who though? More designers?
    - m_ke 8y ago
      Yes
- phailhaus 8y ago
  Why do you think it's stupid? Having your own typeface makes your brand subconsciously recognizable at a glance.
  - jrs95 8y ago
    Given how similar it is to Netflix Sans (and probably many other Sans fonts) I highly doubt that this is something you would prove if you were to test it.
    - phailhaus 8y ago
      Yes, which is why I said subconsciously.
- mortenjorck 8y ago
  It's a prestige thing. The current wave can probably be traced to Microsoft in the early 2010s, with its bespoke Segoe type family. Google followed with Roboto, then Apple with SF, and now you've got everyone from Coca-Cola to CNN commissioning their own type families.
  - janc_ 8y ago
    (Large) companies & publishers have had their own typefaces designed since long (centuries) before that. It got cheaper since the same electronic font can be used for (almost) all sizes, design purposes, etc. though, so it's also happening more often now.
Keloo 8y ago
I get Error establishing a database connection
- jdoliner 8y ago
  Same here, in a very pedestrian typeface no less.
  - anothergoogler 8y ago
    I found it bold.
- welder 8y ago
  Cached version: https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:mm7CiHImqIkJ:https://airbnb.design/introducing-airbnb-cereal/ https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:mm7CiH...
deft 8y ago
Why do they use a screenshot with a typo for demonstration purposes? Beautiful is misspelled as "beutiful". Why are all these companies designing their own fonts. It's not needed and for primarily mobile-based apps it ends up being jarring.
- atanasb 8y ago
  My personal take on this: Q: why do they use a screenshot with a typo. A: Maybe to bring attention to the font? To the letters that are missing or those that are present? Maybe just because they can. Q: Why are all these companies designing their own fonts. It's not needed... A: Many reasons. It can be cheaper than licensing other fonts. It makes their apps (and brand) stand out. Or people might find it more aesthetically pleasing. The perceived `need` for it, has nothing to do with whether or not you need it for their app/website to function properly. And maybe `jarring` is exactly what they want.
  - rhizome 8y ago
    It can be cheaper than licensing other fonts Can it? How many people-hours went into this, and which fonts have higher licensing costs than that?
    - jrs95 8y ago
      It's definitely not cheaper than using free fonts. Or even modifying an existing one -- it's not as if Airbnb's exclusive use of this font is going to benefit them in any measurable way. Even if that were necessary, it seems like they should have just paid Netflix to use their font, and maybe make some changes, rather than working with Dalton Maag to make damn near the same thing.
      - rhizome 8y ago
        I mean, what's the most expensive commercial font license? Neue Helvetica is $350/yr/cpu.
hsljekskfh 8y ago
i’m ashamed that i clicked on this
krstffr 8y ago
Dalton Maag probably had a pretty good 2018 so far: https://twitter.com/kodform/status/996447044100386816?s=21 https://twitter.com/kodform/status/996447044100386816?s=21
- brailsafe 8y ago
  Yep. Those look almost identical.
  - krsdcbl 8y ago
    Look again: a, f are pretty different, proportions differ all over (see O), and the author of the tweet clearly hid the tapered & much wider aperture of the Airbnbs e behind the image. Type design is a subtle thing - they are clearly similar, but definitely not identical
    - brailsafe 8y ago
      I did notice the subtle differences there and certainly agree. In particular the angular terminals. That's why I said "almost". I'd never dismiss those differences, but do those subtle differences align with a goal of distinct identity? Identity feels like more of a higher level observation. For example, if you had two white hats with black text on them in each typeface, you probably wouldn't be able to identify at a glance which company they came from.
      - bobthepanda 8y ago
        I mean, you could say the same about Lufthansa and (formerly) American's use of Helvetica. But no one would accuse them of having the same corporate identity.
        brailsafe 8y ago
        I think the big difference here is how much the typeface itself is touted as being being new or distinct from others as a foundation for their style going forward. Perhaps that's just the impression though. For the airlines' use of Helvetica, that design choice was deliberate. How unique the choice was from others wasn't the main thing going on. I'm not sure I've effectively communicated that thought. Seems tricky to convey. Again, it seems like maybe I'm getting an impression that isn't intentional.
matchbok 8y ago
Must be nice to have enough millions (by taking away apartments from city-dwellers and avoiding laws) to afford a custom typeface.
nik736 8y ago
Error establishing a database connection
- Raphmedia 8y ago
  https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:mm7CiHImqIkJ:https://airbnb.design/introducing-airbnb-cereal/+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=ca https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:mm7CiH...
  - optimuspaul 8y ago
    that serves up garbage. I'm surprised they don't have a static site up for this kind of thing.
enra 8y ago
One of the people involved in the project and answering questions in the article. Happy to answer more questions. We talk about reasoning for Cereal in the article and in my case study too[1]. In large organizations, you often have tens or hundreds of designers, support multiple platforms (ios, android, web(mac, windows, linux) and do ad campaigns around the world. When it comes to typefaces, there really isn't any universal system fonts (other than Arial maybe), that are available on all platforms. If you use different fonts on each platform, the design will be slightly different, trying to manage a cross-platform design system (like we do [2]) becomes challenging. Every time, designer has to pick the right font, potentially do 2-3 designs with different font to make sure they all look how they want them to. Also then each time user or anyone in the company looks at the design on their device, it look will slightly different. If the marketing then also uses different type, it will look slightly off if you include product shots (one reason why Apple now uses SF everywhere). Short answer: having multiple fonts causes additional work and can confuse people, especially inside the company. Since there isn't universal cross-platform fonts, it means you often have to embed fonts, and in some cases license them. Licensing fonts is different than just buying a font file. Even for small developers quality fonts can run up to $50,000 per app (imagine what the licensing costs are for a global company with large userbase!). With licensing you never get exactly what you want in terms of expression and functionality, and other brands can easily buy the same thing. As the last point, what I find really exciting that we can now consider font kind of like a software. We change it whenever we find problems or just want to improve something. That is usually not possible with licensing. Obviously, you would and should only do your own typeface if you have these kind of issues and care enough wanting to solve them. [1]: https://airbnb.design/working-type/ https://airbnb.design/working-type/ [2]: https://airbnb.design/building-a-visual-language/ https://airbnb.design/building-a-visual-language/
- baal232 8y ago
  > If you use different fonts on each platform, the design will be slightly different Oh no, the fonts will look different on different devices! Better commission a custom font. Back in the day, we just accepted that was how the web worked. Jokes aside, I see why you'd want consistency across devices and print. But what's wrong with using an open source typeface, or modifying one for your purposes? > and other brands can easily buy the same things. Why do you think a unique font is essential for branding? Some well known fonts are in use by many companies.
invalidusernam3 8y ago
"We have specific business needs around brand distinction, legibility, and scalability, that no available typefaces were addressing" The font looks almost identical to a lot of other sans fonts.
- brailsafe 8y ago
  The difference between a fontset that looks similar and a fontset that solves for all the business requirements can be vast. Cereal appears to be extremely versatile and distinct in a few key areas. You don't need a custom font to distinguish your brand from others, but you probably do if you're going to be using that one typeface for every damn thing in every damn scenario.
  - 6cd6beb 8y ago
    I think the fact that this new font has an installed base of 0 counts against it's versatility. I think the fact that a negligible amount of the general public could pick the new font (knowingly, not by guessing) out of a group of 9 other sans fonts counts against it's ability to distinguish the airbnb brand from others.
    - hshehehjdjdjd 8y ago
      Installed base is pretty meaningless in a world of web fonts and mobile apps. Everyone will need to download the font once. Not a big deal.
      - 6cd6beb 8y ago
        The installation process isn't the sum total of the point there. Known-good is better than unknown, all other things equal (and not to sound condescending but they basically are). It's low risk but frankly it's even lower reward. If their goal was to distinguish themselves, perhaps they could do it more effectively through something people would notice.
        8y ago
deleted 8y ago
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baal232 8y ago
I liken this to a hotel that decides to make their own lightbulbs. Or a department store that produces it's own bespoke cash registers. You can't argue that typography is so vital to their business that this is a useful allocation of resources. Obviously, design is important to any company that markets itself in some way. But not every company designs their own typeface (although it seems like it, lately.) Some are saying it's important for AirBnB to have their own distinct look, and that requires a custom typeface. BS. Plenty of successful companies managed to create a distinct brand identity using helvetica. https://99designs.com/blog/creative-inspiration/famous-logos-made-with-helvetica/ https://99designs.com/blog/creative-inspiration/famous-logos... Some are saying it's cheaper to make your own typeface than to license one. Really? There are no cheaper typefaces that look suitable? (I'm not saying this is impossible. I'm genuinely curious. Is that how bad it is?) We have open source typography. Are none of those fonts suitable for their purpose? Can any of them be improved by the designers at AirBnB? That sounds like it would be cheaper than starting from scratch. I care about beautiful typography as much as the next web designer / marketer / start up-whatever. But I also know how a business runs. And this seems like something the business should not focus on. Tell me I'm wrong.
- ryanmarsh 8y ago
  I liken this to a hotel that decides to make their own lightbulbs. Or a department store that produces it's own bespoke cash registers. Especially considering their customer service and product quality (read: host integrity) issues.
- brailsafe 8y ago
  You're wrong, and I don't get the impression that you care as much about beautiful typography as much as the next web designer / marketer / start up-whatever. Design is about solving problems. I'd offer up the analogy of Starbucks where I happen to be sitting and working. They create much of their own everything as part of creating a consistent environment for an innumerable amount of possible circumstances in which their stores need to be successful. If it's not bespoke, it's selected which is perfectly fine to do. Sometimes that doesn't work, sometimes it does. Sometimes you want that as your constraint so the object you're making is more easily repairable with commodity parts. Sometimes you're in the market of building the most popular gadgets in the world and you're the only one maintaining them.
aristocles 8y ago
This font is the definition of frivolous corporate idiocy.
adambware 8y ago
Cached version: https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:mm7CiHImqIkJ:https://airbnb.design/introducing-airbnb-cereal/+&cd=4&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:mm7CiH...
spdustin 8y ago
So... it seems like Netflix Sans plus more open apertures (angled terminals) on letters like "e" and "a" Was Netflix Sans the determined starting point?
- jrs95 8y ago
  Seems like it's essentially Netflix Sans with enough changes to be different IP
  - beatboxrevival 8y ago
    Typefaces can't be protected, at least in the US. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intellectual_property_protection_of_typefaces https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intellectual_property_protecti...
    - jrs95 8y ago
      That's kind of amusing. So in theory someone could just copy their typeface and rewrite the "font" and publish it for free. That makes the entire thing seem even more pointless -- if one guy can copy Operator Mono (I found at least one clone of that font as soon as I searched for it on Google) what is the point of paying some design firm to make you damn near the same thing as Netflix Sans when you could just rip it off yourself?
      - janc_ 8y ago
        Typeface designs are protected in some countries outside the US, and even within the US the font _code_ is protected.
- Reedx 8y ago
  Pretty much... The firm that made Netflix Sans made this one too. Looks like they just tweaked it a bit for Airbnb. https://twitter.com/kodform/status/996447044100386816 https://twitter.com/kodform/status/996447044100386816
manmal 8y ago
I‘m not at all a font expert or even geek, so forgive me if that’s dumb: Do all those new product fonts look like Circular [1]? It’s always struck me as a very unique font, but it’s becoming less unique every day it seems. 1: https://lineto.com/The+Fonts/Font+Categories/Text+Fonts/Circular/ https://lineto.com/The+Fonts/Font+Categories/Text+Fonts/Circ...
- skosch 8y ago
  That's a curious charge, since Circular was Airbnb's CI font until today.
iooi 8y ago
Does anyone else with astigmatism notice that the e, c, and even the a are way too closed off? Especially for print (and on the heavier weights), good luck distinguishing these characters from far away with an o.
- heartbreak 8y ago
  Is your astigmatism uncorrected? I can make the characters out just fine, but I wear contacts for astigmatism.
Froyoh 8y ago
No need to reinvent the wheel. There's already Comic Sans.
woolvalley 8y ago
Is it just me, or is the design motif that airbnb is adopting in this post fairly similar to dropbox's? I'm also reminded of it in the new gmail interface.
- whitepoplar 8y ago
  and iOS 11
  - saagarjha 8y ago
    How so?
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
dawhizkid 8y ago
All I can gather from this is Airbnb has way too many engineers and designers for the amount of actual work there is to go around. At the end of the day, the day to day engineering problems Airbnb has are not very interesting. It’s a web app that can handle peak traffic with standard technologies (meaning nothing real time, live streaming, or millions of users at once). I have no clue what most engineers would be doing there day to day.
- shimms 8y ago
  As an example of what some of the engineering people do, that wouldn't be an immediately obvious need if you haven't been involved in running global businesses at scale: https://medium.com/airbnb-engineering/tracking-the-money-scaling-financial-reporting-at-airbnb-6d742b80f040 https://medium.com/airbnb-engineering/tracking-the-money-sca... A tiny part of what they need all these resources for. Obviously running any sufficiently large business on a global basis is a tad more complicated than simply keeping a website up that can absorb usage spikes.
  - dawhizkid 8y ago
    I worked on payments at Uber for 2 years, so I know there is unavoidable complexity in operating at a global scale. I would argue payments is harder at Uber especially on the remittance side compared to Airbnb but obviously I’m biased. I would agree that money engineering is probably the hardest problem they have. But unlike Uber they don’t have any realtime/streaming/GPS-dependent tech. So outside of payments it’s not clear what “interesting” engineering problems they really have, which means throwing engineers and designers to work on pet projects they’ve convinced themselves is really important to the future of the company but are just...pet projects.
    - jensvdh 8y ago
      Airbnb handles hosts and guests paying each other in different currencies. They're also active in 190+ countries. I would say their payments system is more complex than most companies.
abiox 8y ago
i find it fascinating how bizarrely hostile to a company developing a new font some people are. it's just branding and identity, like logos, color schemes and design languages. not really a big deal. but holy smokes do people talk a lot of shit about fonts... for whatever reason. what's going on? is it really about the company, and not the font?
baxtr 8y ago
Please do a major rehaul of your crappy user interface instead of that stuff
foobarbazetc 8y ago
God I wish we had “own typeface” money.
- wanda 8y ago
  Just get Font-Forge[0] and a protractor. Give it a week or two and you'll be able to throw together some copycat LL Circular[1] derivative, to give the illusion of having 'own typeface' money, which might in turn look rather impressive to prospective investors. (At least, when you say 'we', I presume you're speaking on behalf of a fledgling business. If you're just saying that you'd like more money for your family, well, I guess I'd still recommend making fonts because it's very lucrative work apparently.) [0]: https://fontforge.github.io/en-US/ https://fontforge.github.io/en-US/ [1]: https://fontsinuse.com/uses/7192/airbnb-identity-website-app-2014-redesign https://fontsinuse.com/uses/7192/airbnb-identity-website-app...
kccqzy 8y ago
> Our Latin character set has a few hundred characters but Chinese Simplified, for example, has over 27,000. We intend to expand to include script systems used by our global community including Chinese, Japanese, Devanagari, Arabic, Hebrew, Cyrillic, Greek, and Thai, and that will take time. Good luck with that. I wonder how long that will take.
rdlecler1 8y ago
Sad that an article on Airbnb’s font gets more attention than most startups could ever hope to get.
- ggg9990 8y ago
  Well, Airbnbs font will be seen by more people than most startups...
ggg9990 8y ago
A lot of masturbation in the blog text but this is primarily a cost play. At huge scale, licensing a font is a big recurring expense. And using system fonts is costly in a different way when you find that your slick new UI tiles wrap incorrectly with the system font on Windows Phone 8.34. So creating a single cross platform font is the best way to go.
perk 8y ago
I don't really know much it costs to buy a custom font by these designers (Google suggests 150K USD and up). To me this seems like a pretty cheap (and effective) marketing play by Airbnb.
webnrrd2k 8y ago
This post is like the corporate version of the masterbatory Ikea scene in Fight Club.
jasondebo 8y ago
https://youtu.be/cISYzA36-ZY?t=1m30s https://youtu.be/cISYzA36-ZY?t=1m30s Anybody?

157 points by welder 8y ago

This is really cool, and I love the name and its connection to Airbnb founding story

I find it profoundly stupid for Airbnb to have their own typeface. It's like they have lots of designers around and have to keep them busy with something. Well at least they did not give them the usual entertainment for bored designers: redesigning stuff that does not need a redesign.

huac 8y ago
Creating a typeface which you own is cheaper than licensing a third-party typeface, at scale.
- CharlesW 8y ago
  There are lots of really great open source typefaces. In my experience, these choice tend to be more about branding than cost savings (not that cost savings isn't a nice potential benefit).
- kossae 8y ago
  This is likely the reason. I forget the article/post, but I recall reading about this on HN a while back. Basically the licensing for fonts across all platforms can become very costly, so developing a typeface in house becomes an appealing choice once your designs are in front of X number of people (commercial/web/print/etc).
  - amptorn 8y ago
    This is definitely the reason IBM invented Plex -- they have designers aplenty after the IBM Design initiative a few years back and they discovered that unfortunately Helvetica Neue costs money.
- phkahler 8y ago
  >> Creating a typeface which you own is cheaper than licensing a third-party typeface, at scale. The cheapest fonts are the ones installed on a users system. Web sites and apps do not need to include fonts at all. In fact it's easy to argue that the users should be selecting the fonts on their devices in most cases.
  - mozumder 8y ago
    Never let the user control your brand. System fonts should always be thrown away. Every company web site & app needs to include their own font. Otherwise, you become a commodity, and you can be replaced by your competitors. Business is about being different from competitors, not the same. And people buy things that look good. Companies that have crappy branding lose money, because they lose customers to other companies.
    - jadedhacker 8y ago
      If your major differentiating factor is mainly branding, you are already a commodity. Customers will often use shitty looking products if there's something in it for them.
      - ggg9990 8y ago
        Not for a network effect business. A network effect business doesn’t need a strong advantage or even any advantage if the network is strong enough. Note that eBay has barely changed in 20 years yet is still the only place to go to get Hamburglar sunglasses or whatever.
        jadedhacker 8y ago
        Good point.
- 6cd6beb 8y ago
  If they just said that I'd respect it more than I do after 1500 words of self aggrandizing nonsense about how no other typeface reflects "their brand's personality". This is why people make fun of silicon valley. Your new font isn't changing the world and it's not adding value to anything. Certainly not adding value equal to its cost.
m_ke 8y ago
It probably took a week just to put together this post. I bet it's great for recruiting though. Kind of like google letting researchers waste half their time writing papers and going to conferences.
- manigandham 8y ago
  Recruiting who though? More designers?
  - m_ke 8y ago
    Yes
phailhaus 8y ago
Why do you think it's stupid? Having your own typeface makes your brand subconsciously recognizable at a glance.
- jrs95 8y ago
  Given how similar it is to Netflix Sans (and probably many other Sans fonts) I highly doubt that this is something you would prove if you were to test it.
  - phailhaus 8y ago
    Yes, which is why I said subconsciously.
mortenjorck 8y ago
It's a prestige thing. The current wave can probably be traced to Microsoft in the early 2010s, with its bespoke Segoe type family. Google followed with Roboto, then Apple with SF, and now you've got everyone from Coca-Cola to CNN commissioning their own type families.
- janc_ 8y ago
  (Large) companies & publishers have had their own typefaces designed since long (centuries) before that. It got cheaper since the same electronic font can be used for (almost) all sizes, design purposes, etc. though, so it's also happening more often now.

Keloo 8y ago

I get Error establishing a database connection

jdoliner 8y ago
Same here, in a very pedestrian typeface no less.
- anothergoogler 8y ago
  I found it bold.
welder 8y ago
Cached version: https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:mm7CiHImqIkJ:https://airbnb.design/introducing-airbnb-cereal/ https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:mm7CiH...

deft 8y ago

Why do they use a screenshot with a typo for demonstration purposes? Beautiful is misspelled as "beutiful". Why are all these companies designing their own fonts. It's not needed and for primarily mobile-based apps it ends up being jarring.

atanasb 8y ago
My personal take on this: Q: why do they use a screenshot with a typo. A: Maybe to bring attention to the font? To the letters that are missing or those that are present? Maybe just because they can. Q: Why are all these companies designing their own fonts. It's not needed... A: Many reasons. It can be cheaper than licensing other fonts. It makes their apps (and brand) stand out. Or people might find it more aesthetically pleasing. The perceived `need` for it, has nothing to do with whether or not you need it for their app/website to function properly. And maybe `jarring` is exactly what they want.
- rhizome 8y ago
  It can be cheaper than licensing other fonts Can it? How many people-hours went into this, and which fonts have higher licensing costs than that?
  - jrs95 8y ago
    It's definitely not cheaper than using free fonts. Or even modifying an existing one -- it's not as if Airbnb's exclusive use of this font is going to benefit them in any measurable way. Even if that were necessary, it seems like they should have just paid Netflix to use their font, and maybe make some changes, rather than working with Dalton Maag to make damn near the same thing.
    - rhizome 8y ago
      I mean, what's the most expensive commercial font license? Neue Helvetica is $350/yr/cpu.

hsljekskfh 8y ago

i’m ashamed that i clicked on this

krstffr 8y ago

Dalton Maag probably had a pretty good 2018 so far: https://twitter.com/kodform/status/996447044100386816?s=21 https://twitter.com/kodform/status/996447044100386816?s=21

brailsafe 8y ago
Yep. Those look almost identical.
- krsdcbl 8y ago
  Look again: a, f are pretty different, proportions differ all over (see O), and the author of the tweet clearly hid the tapered & much wider aperture of the Airbnbs e behind the image. Type design is a subtle thing - they are clearly similar, but definitely not identical
  - brailsafe 8y ago
    I did notice the subtle differences there and certainly agree. In particular the angular terminals. That's why I said "almost". I'd never dismiss those differences, but do those subtle differences align with a goal of distinct identity? Identity feels like more of a higher level observation. For example, if you had two white hats with black text on them in each typeface, you probably wouldn't be able to identify at a glance which company they came from.
    - bobthepanda 8y ago
      I mean, you could say the same about Lufthansa and (formerly) American's use of Helvetica. But no one would accuse them of having the same corporate identity.
      - brailsafe 8y ago
        I think the big difference here is how much the typeface itself is touted as being being new or distinct from others as a foundation for their style going forward. Perhaps that's just the impression though. For the airlines' use of Helvetica, that design choice was deliberate. How unique the choice was from others wasn't the main thing going on. I'm not sure I've effectively communicated that thought. Seems tricky to convey. Again, it seems like maybe I'm getting an impression that isn't intentional.

matchbok 8y ago

Must be nice to have enough millions (by taking away apartments from city-dwellers and avoiding laws) to afford a custom typeface.

nik736 8y ago

Error establishing a database connection

Raphmedia 8y ago
https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:mm7CiHImqIkJ:https://airbnb.design/introducing-airbnb-cereal/+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=ca https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:mm7CiH...
- optimuspaul 8y ago
  that serves up garbage. I'm surprised they don't have a static site up for this kind of thing.

enra 8y ago

One of the people involved in the project and answering questions in the article. Happy to answer more questions. We talk about reasoning for Cereal in the article and in my case study too[1]. In large organizations, you often have tens or hundreds of designers, support multiple platforms (ios, android, web(mac, windows, linux) and do ad campaigns around the world. When it comes to typefaces, there really isn't any universal system fonts (other than Arial maybe), that are available on all platforms. If you use different fonts on each platform, the design will be slightly different, trying to manage a cross-platform design system (like we do [2]) becomes challenging. Every time, designer has to pick the right font, potentially do 2-3 designs with different font to make sure they all look how they want them to. Also then each time user or anyone in the company looks at the design on their device, it look will slightly different. If the marketing then also uses different type, it will look slightly off if you include product shots (one reason why Apple now uses SF everywhere). Short answer: having multiple fonts causes additional work and can confuse people, especially inside the company. Since there isn't universal cross-platform fonts, it means you often have to embed fonts, and in some cases license them. Licensing fonts is different than just buying a font file. Even for small developers quality fonts can run up to $50,000 per app (imagine what the licensing costs are for a global company with large userbase!). With licensing you never get exactly what you want in terms of expression and functionality, and other brands can easily buy the same thing. As the last point, what I find really exciting that we can now consider font kind of like a software. We change it whenever we find problems or just want to improve something. That is usually not possible with licensing. Obviously, you would and should only do your own typeface if you have these kind of issues and care enough wanting to solve them. [1]: https://airbnb.design/working-type/ https://airbnb.design/working-type/ [2]: https://airbnb.design/building-a-visual-language/ https://airbnb.design/building-a-visual-language/

baal232 8y ago
> If you use different fonts on each platform, the design will be slightly different Oh no, the fonts will look different on different devices! Better commission a custom font. Back in the day, we just accepted that was how the web worked. Jokes aside, I see why you'd want consistency across devices and print. But what's wrong with using an open source typeface, or modifying one for your purposes? > and other brands can easily buy the same things. Why do you think a unique font is essential for branding? Some well known fonts are in use by many companies.

invalidusernam3 8y ago

"We have specific business needs around brand distinction, legibility, and scalability, that no available typefaces were addressing" The font looks almost identical to a lot of other sans fonts.

brailsafe 8y ago
The difference between a fontset that looks similar and a fontset that solves for all the business requirements can be vast. Cereal appears to be extremely versatile and distinct in a few key areas. You don't need a custom font to distinguish your brand from others, but you probably do if you're going to be using that one typeface for every damn thing in every damn scenario.
- 6cd6beb 8y ago
  I think the fact that this new font has an installed base of 0 counts against it's versatility. I think the fact that a negligible amount of the general public could pick the new font (knowingly, not by guessing) out of a group of 9 other sans fonts counts against it's ability to distinguish the airbnb brand from others.
  - hshehehjdjdjd 8y ago
    Installed base is pretty meaningless in a world of web fonts and mobile apps. Everyone will need to download the font once. Not a big deal.
    - 6cd6beb 8y ago
      The installation process isn't the sum total of the point there. Known-good is better than unknown, all other things equal (and not to sound condescending but they basically are). It's low risk but frankly it's even lower reward. If their goal was to distinguish themselves, perhaps they could do it more effectively through something people would notice.
      - 8y ago

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baal232 8y ago

I liken this to a hotel that decides to make their own lightbulbs. Or a department store that produces it's own bespoke cash registers. You can't argue that typography is so vital to their business that this is a useful allocation of resources. Obviously, design is important to any company that markets itself in some way. But not every company designs their own typeface (although it seems like it, lately.) Some are saying it's important for AirBnB to have their own distinct look, and that requires a custom typeface. BS. Plenty of successful companies managed to create a distinct brand identity using helvetica. https://99designs.com/blog/creative-inspiration/famous-logos-made-with-helvetica/ https://99designs.com/blog/creative-inspiration/famous-logos... Some are saying it's cheaper to make your own typeface than to license one. Really? There are no cheaper typefaces that look suitable? (I'm not saying this is impossible. I'm genuinely curious. Is that how bad it is?) We have open source typography. Are none of those fonts suitable for their purpose? Can any of them be improved by the designers at AirBnB? That sounds like it would be cheaper than starting from scratch. I care about beautiful typography as much as the next web designer / marketer / start up-whatever. But I also know how a business runs. And this seems like something the business should not focus on. Tell me I'm wrong.

ryanmarsh 8y ago
I liken this to a hotel that decides to make their own lightbulbs. Or a department store that produces it's own bespoke cash registers. Especially considering their customer service and product quality (read: host integrity) issues.
brailsafe 8y ago
You're wrong, and I don't get the impression that you care as much about beautiful typography as much as the next web designer / marketer / start up-whatever. Design is about solving problems. I'd offer up the analogy of Starbucks where I happen to be sitting and working. They create much of their own everything as part of creating a consistent environment for an innumerable amount of possible circumstances in which their stores need to be successful. If it's not bespoke, it's selected which is perfectly fine to do. Sometimes that doesn't work, sometimes it does. Sometimes you want that as your constraint so the object you're making is more easily repairable with commodity parts. Sometimes you're in the market of building the most popular gadgets in the world and you're the only one maintaining them.

aristocles 8y ago

This font is the definition of frivolous corporate idiocy.

adambware 8y ago

Cached version: https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:mm7CiHImqIkJ:https://airbnb.design/introducing-airbnb-cereal/+&cd=4&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:mm7CiH...

spdustin 8y ago

So... it seems like Netflix Sans plus more open apertures (angled terminals) on letters like "e" and "a" Was Netflix Sans the determined starting point?

jrs95 8y ago
Seems like it's essentially Netflix Sans with enough changes to be different IP
- beatboxrevival 8y ago
  Typefaces can't be protected, at least in the US. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intellectual_property_protection_of_typefaces https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intellectual_property_protecti...
  - jrs95 8y ago
    That's kind of amusing. So in theory someone could just copy their typeface and rewrite the "font" and publish it for free. That makes the entire thing seem even more pointless -- if one guy can copy Operator Mono (I found at least one clone of that font as soon as I searched for it on Google) what is the point of paying some design firm to make you damn near the same thing as Netflix Sans when you could just rip it off yourself?
    - janc_ 8y ago
      Typeface designs are protected in some countries outside the US, and even within the US the font _code_ is protected.
Reedx 8y ago
Pretty much... The firm that made Netflix Sans made this one too. Looks like they just tweaked it a bit for Airbnb. https://twitter.com/kodform/status/996447044100386816 https://twitter.com/kodform/status/996447044100386816

manmal 8y ago

I‘m not at all a font expert or even geek, so forgive me if that’s dumb: Do all those new product fonts look like Circular [1]? It’s always struck me as a very unique font, but it’s becoming less unique every day it seems. 1: https://lineto.com/The+Fonts/Font+Categories/Text+Fonts/Circular/ https://lineto.com/The+Fonts/Font+Categories/Text+Fonts/Circ...

skosch 8y ago
That's a curious charge, since Circular was Airbnb's CI font until today.

iooi 8y ago

Does anyone else with astigmatism notice that the e, c, and even the a are way too closed off? Especially for print (and on the heavier weights), good luck distinguishing these characters from far away with an o.

heartbreak 8y ago
Is your astigmatism uncorrected? I can make the characters out just fine, but I wear contacts for astigmatism.

Froyoh 8y ago

No need to reinvent the wheel. There's already Comic Sans.

woolvalley 8y ago

Is it just me, or is the design motif that airbnb is adopting in this post fairly similar to dropbox's? I'm also reminded of it in the new gmail interface.

whitepoplar 8y ago
and iOS 11
- saagarjha 8y ago
  How so?

deleted 8y ago

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dawhizkid 8y ago

All I can gather from this is Airbnb has way too many engineers and designers for the amount of actual work there is to go around. At the end of the day, the day to day engineering problems Airbnb has are not very interesting. It’s a web app that can handle peak traffic with standard technologies (meaning nothing real time, live streaming, or millions of users at once). I have no clue what most engineers would be doing there day to day.

shimms 8y ago
As an example of what some of the engineering people do, that wouldn't be an immediately obvious need if you haven't been involved in running global businesses at scale: https://medium.com/airbnb-engineering/tracking-the-money-scaling-financial-reporting-at-airbnb-6d742b80f040 https://medium.com/airbnb-engineering/tracking-the-money-sca... A tiny part of what they need all these resources for. Obviously running any sufficiently large business on a global basis is a tad more complicated than simply keeping a website up that can absorb usage spikes.
- dawhizkid 8y ago
  I worked on payments at Uber for 2 years, so I know there is unavoidable complexity in operating at a global scale. I would argue payments is harder at Uber especially on the remittance side compared to Airbnb but obviously I’m biased. I would agree that money engineering is probably the hardest problem they have. But unlike Uber they don’t have any realtime/streaming/GPS-dependent tech. So outside of payments it’s not clear what “interesting” engineering problems they really have, which means throwing engineers and designers to work on pet projects they’ve convinced themselves is really important to the future of the company but are just...pet projects.
  - jensvdh 8y ago
    Airbnb handles hosts and guests paying each other in different currencies. They're also active in 190+ countries. I would say their payments system is more complex than most companies.

abiox 8y ago

i find it fascinating how bizarrely hostile to a company developing a new font some people are. it's just branding and identity, like logos, color schemes and design languages. not really a big deal. but holy smokes do people talk a lot of shit about fonts... for whatever reason. what's going on? is it really about the company, and not the font?

baxtr 8y ago

Please do a major rehaul of your crappy user interface instead of that stuff

foobarbazetc 8y ago

God I wish we had “own typeface” money.

wanda 8y ago
Just get Font-Forge[0] and a protractor. Give it a week or two and you'll be able to throw together some copycat LL Circular[1] derivative, to give the illusion of having 'own typeface' money, which might in turn look rather impressive to prospective investors. (At least, when you say 'we', I presume you're speaking on behalf of a fledgling business. If you're just saying that you'd like more money for your family, well, I guess I'd still recommend making fonts because it's very lucrative work apparently.) [0]: https://fontforge.github.io/en-US/ https://fontforge.github.io/en-US/ [1]: https://fontsinuse.com/uses/7192/airbnb-identity-website-app-2014-redesign https://fontsinuse.com/uses/7192/airbnb-identity-website-app...

kccqzy 8y ago

> Our Latin character set has a few hundred characters but Chinese Simplified, for example, has over 27,000. We intend to expand to include script systems used by our global community including Chinese, Japanese, Devanagari, Arabic, Hebrew, Cyrillic, Greek, and Thai, and that will take time. Good luck with that. I wonder how long that will take.

rdlecler1 8y ago

Sad that an article on Airbnb’s font gets more attention than most startups could ever hope to get.

ggg9990 8y ago
Well, Airbnbs font will be seen by more people than most startups...

ggg9990 8y ago

A lot of masturbation in the blog text but this is primarily a cost play. At huge scale, licensing a font is a big recurring expense. And using system fonts is costly in a different way when you find that your slick new UI tiles wrap incorrectly with the system font on Windows Phone 8.34. So creating a single cross platform font is the best way to go.

perk 8y ago

I don't really know much it costs to buy a custom font by these designers (Google suggests 150K USD and up). To me this seems like a pretty cheap (and effective) marketing play by Airbnb.

webnrrd2k 8y ago

This post is like the corporate version of the masterbatory Ikea scene in Fight Club.

jasondebo 8y ago

https://youtu.be/cISYzA36-ZY?t=1m30s https://youtu.be/cISYzA36-ZY?t=1m30s Anybody?