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Signifier – a Brutalist response to 17th century typefaces
- dvaun 6y agoI like using interesting fonts and would definitely grab this for my Kindle if I could afford the price tag.
- dddddaviddddd 6y agoFor the curious, $400 for use on three devices (includes using the font to create printed materials) https://klim.co.nz/buy/signifier/ https://klim.co.nz/buy/signifier/
- sibane 6y agoNo one really needs an entire family though. Get the Regular, Regular Italic and Bold to do everything a normal person would need a typeface for. $150. Everything else if for weirdos and designers buying type for their clients.
- just_steve_h 6y ago"… weirdos and designers buying type for their clients" – but, I repeat myself!
- refresher 6y agoI loved that after seeing the comparisons, you can notice that the article was writing in Signifier. Did not love the CPU usage of the page (at lease for me, it rocketed up. macOS, Safari)
- RaoulP 6y agoSame here - macOS, Safari, and I've never heard my fans spin so loudly before. I wonder what causes it.
- tln 6y agoDoesn't seem to happen on the font information page: https://klim.co.nz/retail-fonts/signifier/ https://klim.co.nz/retail-fonts/signifier/
- earthboundkid 6y agoReact is the new PHP: a dangerously welcoming ecosystem for amateurs. If you look at the trace, you see it's firing a timer for LazyImage every 300 milliseconds that that's causing constant repaints. It's terrible, but no one believes in craftsmanship anymore. :-) // Give react a chance to render before starting to poll // This gives us more chance of the opacity transition being visible // Should also fix rendering glitches in firefox where native image placeholder shows briefly setTimeout(pollForComplete, 300); },
- jazzyjackson 6y agoHmm, settimeout is one shot, setinterval is the repeating one, unless that’s calling itself recursively? Anyway using delays hoping that things are in place in 300ms is asking for trouble, I thought reacts whole thing was to put everything in a component lifecycle callback so everything happens in the order it needs to
- earthboundkid 6y agoGood point! There must be some other interval causing the timer to be set.
- editkid 6y agoHello! Thanks for having a fossick through our code ;) Happy to report that the issue has now been resolved. I've added a post explaining the underlying cause a little up in the thread. (I'm not sure how notifications work on HN, so figured I'd drop a reply here, too).
- 6y ago
- editkid 6y agoHello! I'm a developer for Klim. Thanks for prompting us to look at this CPU usage issue. I'm happy to say that it has now been resolved. For those interested in the underlying cause, it seems to have been a bug in Safari. The following CSS triggered infinite repaints: transition: all; The solution was to simply be more specific: transition: background-color;
- earthboundkid 6y agoInteresting cause. I wonder how long we’ll need to manually specify what transitions. It seems like an optimization problem that the browser could solve on its own, but I guess not yet.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- editkid 6y agoHere is the related bug report. It's quite a specific case, so not simply triggered by using "transition: all" in isolation. https://bugs.webkit.org/show_bug.cgi?id=202467 https://bugs.webkit.org/show_bug.cgi?id=202467
- earthboundkid 6y agoGreat detective work.
- jeffrallen 6y agoI'm glad there are people in this world who can completely unironically and confidently write "Signifier’s digital immateriality draws on a deeply material past. Acknowledging the processes and tools of digital form-making, I worked consciously with the computer to recast the lead, antimony, and tin of the 17th century Fell Types into ones and zeros." I certainly couldn't!
- Luc 6y agoAfter skimming through most of the article that paragraph actually started to make some sense to me.
- lotyrin 6y agoI had the exact opposite experience. This thesis (and the introduction) made perfect sense to me but the following results, methods and rationales left me unconvinced and uninspired.
- earthboundkid 6y agoAnything that smart people spend a lifetime doing—programming, font making, engineering, woodworking, auto repair, painting (house and fine art)—has depths that look completely crazy to outsiders.
- throw_m239339 6y agoI'm sorry, but again, none of that stuff has anything to do with "brutalism" which has been made a complete buzzword for the last 4 years, just because "design needs trends". No it doesn't. Design for your audience and don't follow "trends".
- FoundersGrotesk 6y agoI replied above how I do believe it adheres to a Brutalist ethos. We design exactly for my audience, and while we don’t follow trends we’re very aware of the zeitgeist.
- petters 6y agoWhat would a "true" brutalist font look like? Brutalism is about exposing the materials used in construction (i.e. the raw concrete is visible). So maybe a font that also shows its own spline control points?
- FoundersGrotesk 6y agoMy understanding of the Brutalism ethos is not about exposing the material itself used in construction, but “… rather the quality of the material… ” A font with it's own BCP's exposed exists! https://djr.com/gimlet-xray/ https://djr.com/gimlet-xray/ But they're still drawn with béziers… the're not the BCP's themselves. Now that would be a recursive/fractal vector nightmare.
- tomcam 6y agoRead the article. You may be surprised.
- dvaun 6y agoThe author does explain[0] his underlying persective/meaning of Brutalism: > Brutalism wasn’t a specific material or style, it was an attempt to be true to the raw qualities of materials. It was an ethic.¹⁸ Signifier adheres to this ethic, Brutalism’s core concepts framed my working process and thinking rather than pre-determining the outcome. There’s a sense of the vector, the grid, the underlying digital nature. For instance, you can’t see that Adobe Garamond’s a is digital, but you can see it in Signifier’s a. And from the footnote: > “The difference is not merely one of form of words: ‘Neo-Brutalist’ is a stylistic label, like Neo-Classic or Neo-Gothic, whereas ‘The New Brutalism’ is, in the Brutalist phrase “an ethic, not an aesthetic. It describes a programme or an attitude to architecture.” Reyner Banham, “The New Brutalism”, (1966): 10. I don't believe that the term was applied based on it being a buzzword or a recent trend. [0]: https://klim.co.nz/blog/signifier-design-information/#footnote-back-18 https://klim.co.nz/blog/signifier-design-information/#footno... Edit: Added reference to the location in the article
- breakfastduck 6y agoI've never really thought too much about the font industry of the past - this is quite the interesting read. The font he's created is great. I wasn't fond of the sharpness initially, especially when the text is blown up, but it reads wonderfully when it's at a 'normal' text size. I must confess - I had no idea fonts were so expensive to license! (Not a criticism of the cost, just ignorant until now).
- EricE 6y agoI had the same experience - found the blown up version to not be appealing at all, but ended up really liking, as you put it, the readability of the normal sized text.
- bovermyer 6y agoThat epilogue was poignant and lent an entirely different feel to the entire article.
- ARandomerDude 6y agoHe used Aristotelian terms but misunderstood them, probably because of how we now use "material" in ordinary English. The letters on the screen have form (shape, meaning) and matter (pixels). The matter of the letter has changed but it still has matter in the Aristotelian sense.
- bovermyer 6y agoI was referring to the tragedy in the author's life.
- oska 6y agoWe don't know how old the author's mother was when she died. My grandfather died of cancer at 79. While it was sad (and I still feel sad when I think of it) I wouldn't ever describe it as a 'tragedy'. Only commenting because I feel this word is overused these days.
- FoundersGrotesk 6y agoThe death of a loved one is almost always a personal tragedy, regardless of age. Overuse of a word doesn’t make it any less so.
- oska 6y agoYou're simply changing the meaning of the word then and also, I would suggest, debasing the complex experience of death by suggesting it is a singular, universal experience of 'personal tragedy'. Everyone loses loved ones and in many cases it is not experienced as tragedy but as death being a normal and essential part of life.
- aaroninsf 6y agoThe philosophical context of font design is one of those niches of rarified contemporary hothouse cultural specialization that makes me thing, this is as far as we go, as a culture. Reading these things I inevitably experience intellectual vertigo, the deep-zoom-into-a-fractal sense of perfectly accurate, almost totally unnecessary, precision at microscopy scale. It's more Gibson than Gibson, not least if you're aware of Douglas Hofstadter's obsession with "letter spirits" and their multidimensional relationship to GAI... We had a good run.
- dvaun 6y ago> ...not least if you're aware of Douglas Hofstadter's obsession with "letter spirits" and their multidimensional relationship to GAI... This is an interesting topic I've never seen before. Down the rabbit hole I go...thanks for posting this
- Ericson2314 6y agoI agree with your emotional reaction, but calling anything the limit as it currently appears I think is foolhardy. Our current trajectory has long been less Keynesian feedback loop, and more zero-sum advertising-based competition between entrenched conglomerates over shrinking consumption. The recipe for vertigo in the art-design-advertising sector is the tension between bohemian ideals on one hand, and the social relations of patronage on the the other. Unless you think collapse or equilibrium is immanent, buckle up for more of the same.
- pembrook 6y agoMaybe you should take a look in the mirror, we're all toiling in rarified contemporary hothouse cultural specialization. "Hey, here's a cool article about a guy who spent a year creating another over-engineered javascript framework because he had an aesthetic dislike of semicolons. This matters! Upvote!" Welcome to Hacker News.
- HelloNurse 6y agoIt's the same "perfectly accurate, almost totally unnecessary, precision at microscopy scale" involved in doing anything with numbers. Ancient Babylonians were surely enthusiastic about astronomical computations, you are enthusiastic about clever fonts (and rest assured that there are much more extreme ones around), and some entirely different mathematical technology will be mind-blowing tomorrow.
- Anka33 6y agoBrutalism has socialist roots where the individual was to be made to feel small and insignificant.. pure evil shit!
- paultopia 6y agoIs this a joke? Is there an actual typeface somewhere here underneath all the pomo theory? Are the pictures of one font or many?
- chipsa 6y agoIt's set in the typeface it's talking about.
- TheOtherHobbes 6y agoI love the fact that the typeface is so bad at signifying anything that it's possible for some readers not to notice it.
- sibane 6y agoOr it's so good at signifying the meaning of the symbols that the reader is never pulled out of the text.
- blululu 6y agoThis is a surprisingly nice type face. It looks blocky when blown up, but it is really clean for small text. It took me a second to zoom in on the text and realize that the article is written in the typeface itself. I'm curious is there might be a legibility benefit to having a more rectilinear font. Perhaps the transfer function of TTF's anti-aliasing is cleaner along the horizontal and vertical axes rather than along a diagonal or curve. Having a less curvy font might be easier to render since the edges align with the display.
- warent 6y agoInterestingly, many fonts look very strange when zoomed in because they employ all kinds of tricks to exploit optical illusions to give their fonts particular expression, such as curves and pinches that are almost imperceptible when viewed at a normal size. Unfortunately at the moment I can't find an article which clearly demonstrates what I'm talking about.
- kindall 6y agoHinting is what that's called.
- raphlinus 6y agoI think ~warent is referring to features like ink traps, which are features that do look strange up-close, but might help increase contrast or other qualities at small sizes.
- nyanpasu64 6y agoMaybe overshoot as well?
- mmmrk 6y agoThat's a separate concept, he probably means ink traps and optical size adjustments.
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- cpach 6y agoRelated: If anyone is curious about the Fell Types, there are digitised versions available here: https://iginomarini.com/fell/ https://iginomarini.com/fell/
- warent 6y agoThis is a beautiful font, it looks like the kind of thing I would expect to be seen used in a dictionary or encyclopedia.
- DC-3 6y agoI'm not sure I like the font but this sure is a lovely article
- udev 6y agoNot sure if it just me, but I find it considerably more relaxing to read the text from the photo of the page (with all the surface and font imperfections) than read text written with the same font rendered on solid background (this time perfect). It's almost like I need the paper and font imperfections to read faster. My theory is that the brain somehow uses the paper and font imperfections to coregister (align) the binocular images from our eyes, which leads to smoother reading.
- Koshkin 6y agoThis makes sense to me, as I had the same impression; my theory is that it is the diversity and the individuality of the letters in the text that makes reading easier, and slight imperfections and irregularities only add to this. The "brutalist" digital version, on the other hand, seemed to me more of a demonstration of how far one can go using tricks without anyone noticing.
- crazygringo 6y agoThe font is certainly interesting conceptually, and doesn't look bad (though is largely indistinguishable from its "Garamond" source at normal sizes). And while I've read the whole thing and understand why the author considers this to be a "Brutalist" philosophy, I respectfully disagree. This is merely vectors adhering to a grid, which has nothing to do with the "exposing raw materials" philosophy that is the core of Brutalism. [1] To me, early pixel-based terminal fonts feel like the digital typography version of Brutalism -- not even attempting curves or calligraphy at all, but embracing the raw material of pixels for exactly what they are. If the author wants to bring a similar Brutalist raw-materials approach to modern vector-based typography I'd find that interesting as well -- but that would seem to have been done a long time ago, with typography based solely on primitive geometric shapes, of which classic typefaces from the 20th century would seem most suitable (Futura [2], Avant Garde [3]). In the end, Signifier is a cool concept typeface. But I unfortunately think the author fails at connecting it to Brutalism in any meaningful way, despite their attempt. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brutalist_architecture https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brutalist_architecture [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Futura_(typeface) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Futura_(typeface) [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ITC_Avant_Garde https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ITC_Avant_Garde
- armandososa 6y agoI don't think the point is "vectors adhering to a grid", quite the contrary it looks to me that the author is exposing the raw materials of a font which are, essentially, bezier curves expressed as ones and zeroes. I think the image that better conveys that idea is this: https://d14810e2jnirzn.cloudfront.net/media/documents/Signifier-Sharpness-Blunt-Heldane-a.svg https://d14810e2jnirzn.cloudfront.net/media/documents/Signif... The non-signifier fonts have some extra points in their bezier curves, which are bits in disk, traveling on the network, stored in memory and processed by the rendering engine that are going to be completely wasted when rendered at 16pts. That's quite profound for me. And I'm not an authority in Brutalism, but looks like the author was faithful to what he thinks brutalism is concerned with (from the article): > Brutalism is not concerned with the material as such but rather the quality of the material, that is with the question: what can it do?
- knolax 6y agoTrue brutalism would've been a bitmap font.
- achairapart 6y agoWow. This is a wonderful work of digital craftsmanship. I was absolutely blown away.
- kiliancs 6y agoThis was a great read. The subject is interesting, but I also enjoyed how it's written. Thanks.
- danboarder 6y agoThis is the CyberTruck of fonts, and it is brilliant in a similar way. I think this designer is on to something. The legacy type styles are proven over centuries - or have we just been conditioned over centuries? I think of this as a Serif with the legibility of a Sans.
- FoundersGrotesk 6y agoIf you tune into our livestream next week, you’ll see me stride onto the stage and confidently throw a steel ball at the… oh.
- samatman 6y agoI love it. I don't have much more to add than that: I really like this font. It pushes proportion in so many subtle ways, and the result is just... I want to write a book so that I can typeset it in Signifier. I wouldn't have thought it was possible to make a font that's so recognizably classic and yet so distinctively itself. That took taste, and just enormous reserves of effort; but an effort which shows itself in a restrained, elegant fashion. I firmly disagree with the comment that it's indistinguishable from Garamond! The f, d, and g immediately tell me that this isn't Garamond, and that's before I opened up Font Book to compare some more subtle letters. The f positively looms over the subsequent letter, while the loop of g swells voluptuously into the space around it. Yet somehow, they manage to do this without crowding their neighbors. That's really hard! Again, love it. Great font.
- KaiserPro 6y agoI love the post, I hate the font. But I am glad they have made it. They also raise an important point: half-arsed revivals of older fonts. I've been trying to make posters in the style of 1930s adverts. There are a few challenges, but one of the biggest is finding the correct font that hasn't been modernised.
- FoundersGrotesk 6y agoI’d hazard a guess that most posters from the era are hand-lettered, not typeset from fonts. You’ll be hard-pressed to fake a 30’s aesthetic with modern digital fonts.
- omnimus 6y agoApple has for some reason licensed some of Klim type typefaces. If you are on latest version of OSX you can activate/download them from Fontbook. Klim type are objectively top 3 type foundries in the world not many people doing better than them. So its a great deal.
- FoundersGrotesk 6y agoKia ora! I’m Kris Sowersby, designer of Signifier and author of the design info post on Klim. First up, I’d like to thank you all for taking the time to read it. I really appreciate it. I’ve neither heard of Hacker News nor been here before. But I’m chuffed that you’re discussing and critiquing with such wit and (on the whole) sensitivity. I never expected it from this quarter, and it’s something that the online type & design community seems to be lacking. I’ll address some specific points in thread where necessary. —Chur.