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Designer here: Inter is my go-to font - a free (and incredibly made!) cross between Helvetica and SF Pro! Rasmus himself has worked at his fair share of Big Imp

Designer here: Inter is my go-to font - a free (and incredibly made!) cross between Helvetica and SF Pro! Rasmus himself has worked at his fair share of Big Important Brands (part of the original team at Spotify, worked at Facebook, NodeJS, Dropbox, Figma) [0] and it's kinda crazy to me how much Rasmus has affected me: I see the Figma icon he created every day, I see the Spotify branding he founded, I use Inter, it's kinda crazy. Inter is the kind of font that you use when you need something that just works. Not too fancy, not too simple, it's perfect for so many things. And it's free. And it's open source [1]. What's not to like! [0] https://rsms.me/work https://rsms.me/work [1] https://github.com/rsms/inter https://github.com/rsms/inter Edit: it's also not a new thing, and not a 'new SF clone' - it's been around since 2016[2]. [2] https://rsms.me/work/inter/ https://rsms.me/work/inter/

systemvoltage 5y ago
I beg to differ - for UX/UI, especially small screens you want large counters and tracking, as well as much higher x-heights than Inter. It's a great general purpose font, but not the best for UX/UI. SF Pro has SF Pro Compact to deal with aforementioned issues (It is used on Apple Watch).
- nyanpasu64 5y ago
  > much higher x-heights than Inter. Large x-heights make me sad; I think they're helpful in screens the size of a phone or smaller, but I don't like them on desktops. Inter's x-heights are already beyond my personal aesthetic tastes.
  - systemvoltage 5y ago
    I should clarify the purpose of x-heights and how it relates to legibility. Taller x-heights leads to better optical legibility in small sizes. Shorter x-heights are usually found in fonts such as Source Serif Pro for obvious reasons - it leads to be better shape recognition of the words and improved readability. Excellent in long prose and text use. Usually "Book" fonts have very short x-height. One of my favorites is Nexus Serif: https://www.martinmajoor.com/4_nexus.html https://www.martinmajoor.com/4_nexus.html For UX/UI - ever wondered by EXIT signs are in all caps and not written as Exit? It's because of the relation of x-height to legibility at small sizes or larger distances. This is the same for avionics, warning labels, etc. Inter isn't a good font for UX/UI IMO for the same reason why Helvetica and SF Pro aren't. They're general purpose fonts - neither good at text nor UX/UI but somewhere in the middle.
- mortenjorck 5y ago
  This is rather overstating the shortcomings for small sizes – Apple only uses SF Compact on the Watch; SF Text is used on even the smallest elements in iOS and macOS. Inter reduces approximately as well. As for tracking, it’s already a good practice to use a slightly higher `letter-spacing` value at small sizes (something UIkit does automatically), so this isn’t really a function of the font family.
_moof 5y ago
Would this be a good font to use on a small (2.8 inch) screen? I’ve got a little hobby hardware project I’m working on and am a total typography dunce.
- nine_k 5y ago
  Depends on resolution and color depth / shades of gray. If you have few pixels, and / or 1-2 of bit color depth, you may be better off with a bitmapped font. If your display is many hundreds of pixels wide and has and several shades for antialiasing, any good font designed and hinted for screens would work.
- jfim 5y ago
  Unibody 8 [0] is pretty excellent if you're dealing with a low resolution raster device. It looks like this in action: https://twitter.com/underware/status/947439103645245440 https://twitter.com/underware/status/947439103645245440 [0] https://underware.nl/fonts/unibody/styles https://underware.nl/fonts/unibody/styles
junon 5y ago
Wow it's actually an honor to respond here. I've used Inter in my app boilerplate for a while now and we love it. Thank you so much for your work.
- sho_hn 5y ago
  OP is a designer, not the designer.
  - junon 5y ago
    Derp, I'm an idiot.
    - alisonkisk 5y ago
      not your fault. That comment was misleadingly ambiguous. ("Designer here" and nothing later disambiguated.)
- r5Khe 5y ago
  To be clear, the author of the parent you're responding to is not the designer of Inter, they are simply _a_ designer.
5faulker 5y ago
The variable font is awesome too. Love that one can control the parameters to one's will.
ardit33 5y ago
Inter is not a good font at all... maybe for super short text/labels, but for larger ones it has bad kearning. If anybody wants a good example of how not-good looking Inter is for headlines/articles check out: https://thehill.com/ https://thehill.com/ I think part of the popularity is that it is free, and it is a decent enough grotesk font to do the job, but you wont get great results with it.
- lloydatkinson 5y ago
  the link looks fine
  - flir 5y ago
    The o often has too much space around it in the middle of words. In "stave" the v cleaves too close to the e. (IMO).
- mrkwse 5y ago
  The Hill isn't relevant at all. Every headline and the body all use 'Graphik', not Inter.
maxloh 5y ago
Hi user here. Is there a estimated release date of the Inter Display font?

systemvoltage 5y ago

I beg to differ - for UX/UI, especially small screens you want large counters and tracking, as well as much higher x-heights than Inter. It's a great general purpose font, but not the best for UX/UI. SF Pro has SF Pro Compact to deal with aforementioned issues (It is used on Apple Watch).

nyanpasu64 5y ago
> much higher x-heights than Inter. Large x-heights make me sad; I think they're helpful in screens the size of a phone or smaller, but I don't like them on desktops. Inter's x-heights are already beyond my personal aesthetic tastes.
- systemvoltage 5y ago
  I should clarify the purpose of x-heights and how it relates to legibility. Taller x-heights leads to better optical legibility in small sizes. Shorter x-heights are usually found in fonts such as Source Serif Pro for obvious reasons - it leads to be better shape recognition of the words and improved readability. Excellent in long prose and text use. Usually "Book" fonts have very short x-height. One of my favorites is Nexus Serif: https://www.martinmajoor.com/4_nexus.html https://www.martinmajoor.com/4_nexus.html For UX/UI - ever wondered by EXIT signs are in all caps and not written as Exit? It's because of the relation of x-height to legibility at small sizes or larger distances. This is the same for avionics, warning labels, etc. Inter isn't a good font for UX/UI IMO for the same reason why Helvetica and SF Pro aren't. They're general purpose fonts - neither good at text nor UX/UI but somewhere in the middle.
mortenjorck 5y ago
This is rather overstating the shortcomings for small sizes – Apple only uses SF Compact on the Watch; SF Text is used on even the smallest elements in iOS and macOS. Inter reduces approximately as well. As for tracking, it’s already a good practice to use a slightly higher `letter-spacing` value at small sizes (something UIkit does automatically), so this isn’t really a function of the font family.

_moof 5y ago

Would this be a good font to use on a small (2.8 inch) screen? I’ve got a little hobby hardware project I’m working on and am a total typography dunce.

nine_k 5y ago
Depends on resolution and color depth / shades of gray. If you have few pixels, and / or 1-2 of bit color depth, you may be better off with a bitmapped font. If your display is many hundreds of pixels wide and has and several shades for antialiasing, any good font designed and hinted for screens would work.
jfim 5y ago
Unibody 8 [0] is pretty excellent if you're dealing with a low resolution raster device. It looks like this in action: https://twitter.com/underware/status/947439103645245440 https://twitter.com/underware/status/947439103645245440 [0] https://underware.nl/fonts/unibody/styles https://underware.nl/fonts/unibody/styles

junon 5y ago

Wow it's actually an honor to respond here. I've used Inter in my app boilerplate for a while now and we love it. Thank you so much for your work.

sho_hn 5y ago
OP is a designer, not the designer.
- junon 5y ago
  Derp, I'm an idiot.
  - alisonkisk 5y ago
    not your fault. That comment was misleadingly ambiguous. ("Designer here" and nothing later disambiguated.)
r5Khe 5y ago
To be clear, the author of the parent you're responding to is not the designer of Inter, they are simply _a_ designer.

5faulker 5y ago

The variable font is awesome too. Love that one can control the parameters to one's will.

ardit33 5y ago

Inter is not a good font at all... maybe for super short text/labels, but for larger ones it has bad kearning. If anybody wants a good example of how not-good looking Inter is for headlines/articles check out: https://thehill.com/ https://thehill.com/ I think part of the popularity is that it is free, and it is a decent enough grotesk font to do the job, but you wont get great results with it.

lloydatkinson 5y ago
the link looks fine
- flir 5y ago
  The o often has too much space around it in the middle of words. In "stave" the v cleaves too close to the e. (IMO).
mrkwse 5y ago
The Hill isn't relevant at all. Every headline and the body all use 'Graphik', not Inter.

maxloh 5y ago

Hi user here. Is there a estimated release date of the Inter Display font?