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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 p

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.

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.