8 ms·

Inter – open source and legible typeface

176 points by stockkid 8y ago

saagarjha 8y ago
Reminds me a lot of San Francisco, though the terminals are a bit more oblique.
Cenk 8y ago
Previously discussed (664 points, 92 comments): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18784583 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18784583
dvh 8y ago
Part of the legibility is your screen time, how much time did your spend reading that font. I'm using DejaVu Sans for about 10 years and while there may be slightly better fonts, it's not worth it to change it. Just pick one font and stick with it, don't change it every six months. This goes for websites and OS as well. Arbitrary changes are annoying because you are losing your hard learned visual parser settings. On mobile when I'm about to read longer article I use plugin to change all elements to medium size black on white sans-serif. For legibility, consistency and familiarity is more important than finding the perfect font.
- Double_a_92 8y ago
  Yes, but the perfect font would still be perfect. Which could benefit people that are not unbiased yet.
  - imglorp 8y ago
    Maybe someone could explain to a font-illiterate what is different about a new font like this, why do people keep making new ones, and won't all new ideal, clean, readable fonts converge to be indistinguishable from each other because they have the same requirements?
    - miloshadzic 8y ago
      What's considered "ideal" changes. For UI typefaces the medium they're used for has changed (HIDPI screens are the norm now), so it's causing a small renaissance of type design for screens.
petercooper 8y ago
This project has one of the best designed homepages and introductions to a project I've seen for a long time: https://rsms.me/inter/ https://rsms.me/inter/
- sudhirj 8y ago
  Heh, yeah, it's almost like the project was created by a professional designer.
  - petercooper 8y ago
    Ha! You'd be surprised. I've seen some dreadfully unusable pages designed by celebrated designers. I think there's a distinction between designers who focus on visuals and effects and those who actually produce good overall experiences. This person clearly falls into the latter and, I argue, smaller group.
    - giancarlostoro 8y ago
      More UI than UI/UX. I'd prefer a UX expert overall, it would at least imply a reasonably decent UI.
    - theIV 8y ago
      Just as an FYI, I believe Rasmus was the original Design Lead at Spotify.
- boromi 8y ago
  Yeah it's a very nice and clean homepage. Anyone know if there's a template for a page like this, (looking to use it with hugo if possible) Thanks
- wtmt 8y ago
  I looked at that page and was impressed. Does anyone here have suggestions on freely licensed serif fonts that focus on readability (non-system fonts)?
michaelchris 8y ago
Kinda wanting to have this set the default system font for MacOS replacing San Francisco. Unfortunately requiring a lot of hacking around the OS to do so.
noir_lord 8y ago
I switched last time this was posted and I've liked it a lot. With Cinnamon on Fedora it's very pretty.
Theodores 8y ago
I have been working with this font since the last time it was posted here and I am far from bored of it. I did contact Rasmus the developer as I needed a little bit of help self hosting it, Rasmus got back to me very quickly which was very nice. If anyone is using this font do note that it is no longer 'Inter UI' but 'Inter'. Update your CSS accordingly even though there is a legacy @import for the old font name. Also take note of the glyphs, there are plenty of them and you can use them for UI elements. If you are doing fractions in your HTML then Inter will do a neat job of displaying them. Calling this a 'font' is an understatement, it does it all and redefines what a font should be - variable, fully featured and with excellent support in Rasmus + contributors.
pvorb 8y ago
I'm not sure if it's not rendered correctly in my browser, but I think the kerning could be improved.
pizza 8y ago
nice looking font
jccalhoun 8y ago
Any font where l and I are too similar is not legible to me.
- Stratoscope 8y ago
  Click the sample image and scroll down to the Alternate Forms.
andjd 8y ago
If your UX requires a font that is optimized for rendering at small sizes, it's bad UX. Just use a larger font size instead.
sqd 8y ago
What exactly is the difference between an open source font and a free font? I mean, don't we also have the bitmaps?
- mplewis 8y ago
  This is the raw text source used to generate the .otf, .ttf, and .woff2 font files: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/rsms/inter/master/src/Inter.glyphs https://raw.githubusercontent.com/rsms/inter/master/src/Inte...
- WorldMaker 8y ago
  Most fonts are vectors (font scaling is mostly just simple vector math) rather than bitmaps. Additionally, the vector format fonts use internally is highly optimized for usage performance (think about how much text is rendered on a screen at a time or in a document), and to a lesser extent storage size, and not always particularly useful in reverse engineering (reverse designing?) the designer's intent for a given glyph. Some open source fonts you can see every source control change of SVG documents or similar, which eventually get fed into a font processor for "compilation" into the final font formats.

176 points by stockkid 8y ago

Reminds me a lot of San Francisco, though the terminals are a bit more oblique.

Cenk 8y ago

Previously discussed (664 points, 92 comments): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18784583 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18784583

dvh 8y ago

Part of the legibility is your screen time, how much time did your spend reading that font. I'm using DejaVu Sans for about 10 years and while there may be slightly better fonts, it's not worth it to change it. Just pick one font and stick with it, don't change it every six months. This goes for websites and OS as well. Arbitrary changes are annoying because you are losing your hard learned visual parser settings. On mobile when I'm about to read longer article I use plugin to change all elements to medium size black on white sans-serif. For legibility, consistency and familiarity is more important than finding the perfect font.

Double_a_92 8y ago
Yes, but the perfect font would still be perfect. Which could benefit people that are not unbiased yet.
- imglorp 8y ago
  Maybe someone could explain to a font-illiterate what is different about a new font like this, why do people keep making new ones, and won't all new ideal, clean, readable fonts converge to be indistinguishable from each other because they have the same requirements?
  - miloshadzic 8y ago
    What's considered "ideal" changes. For UI typefaces the medium they're used for has changed (HIDPI screens are the norm now), so it's causing a small renaissance of type design for screens.

petercooper 8y ago

This project has one of the best designed homepages and introductions to a project I've seen for a long time: https://rsms.me/inter/ https://rsms.me/inter/

sudhirj 8y ago
Heh, yeah, it's almost like the project was created by a professional designer.
- petercooper 8y ago
  Ha! You'd be surprised. I've seen some dreadfully unusable pages designed by celebrated designers. I think there's a distinction between designers who focus on visuals and effects and those who actually produce good overall experiences. This person clearly falls into the latter and, I argue, smaller group.
  - giancarlostoro 8y ago
    More UI than UI/UX. I'd prefer a UX expert overall, it would at least imply a reasonably decent UI.
  - theIV 8y ago
    Just as an FYI, I believe Rasmus was the original Design Lead at Spotify.
boromi 8y ago
Yeah it's a very nice and clean homepage. Anyone know if there's a template for a page like this, (looking to use it with hugo if possible) Thanks
wtmt 8y ago
I looked at that page and was impressed. Does anyone here have suggestions on freely licensed serif fonts that focus on readability (non-system fonts)?

michaelchris 8y ago

Kinda wanting to have this set the default system font for MacOS replacing San Francisco. Unfortunately requiring a lot of hacking around the OS to do so.

noir_lord 8y ago

I switched last time this was posted and I've liked it a lot. With Cinnamon on Fedora it's very pretty.

Theodores 8y ago

I have been working with this font since the last time it was posted here and I am far from bored of it. I did contact Rasmus the developer as I needed a little bit of help self hosting it, Rasmus got back to me very quickly which was very nice. If anyone is using this font do note that it is no longer 'Inter UI' but 'Inter'. Update your CSS accordingly even though there is a legacy @import for the old font name. Also take note of the glyphs, there are plenty of them and you can use them for UI elements. If you are doing fractions in your HTML then Inter will do a neat job of displaying them. Calling this a 'font' is an understatement, it does it all and redefines what a font should be - variable, fully featured and with excellent support in Rasmus + contributors.

pvorb 8y ago

I'm not sure if it's not rendered correctly in my browser, but I think the kerning could be improved.

pizza 8y ago

nice looking font

jccalhoun 8y ago

Any font where l and I are too similar is not legible to me.

Stratoscope 8y ago
Click the sample image and scroll down to the Alternate Forms.

andjd 8y ago

If your UX requires a font that is optimized for rendering at small sizes, it's bad UX. Just use a larger font size instead.

sqd 8y ago

What exactly is the difference between an open source font and a free font? I mean, don't we also have the bitmaps?

mplewis 8y ago
This is the raw text source used to generate the .otf, .ttf, and .woff2 font files: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/rsms/inter/master/src/Inter.glyphs https://raw.githubusercontent.com/rsms/inter/master/src/Inte...
WorldMaker 8y ago
Most fonts are vectors (font scaling is mostly just simple vector math) rather than bitmaps. Additionally, the vector format fonts use internally is highly optimized for usage performance (think about how much text is rendered on a screen at a time or in a document), and to a lesser extent storage size, and not always particularly useful in reverse engineering (reverse designing?) the designer's intent for a given glyph. Some open source fonts you can see every source control change of SVG documents or similar, which eventually get fed into a font processor for "compilation" into the final font formats.