3 ms·
I guess there's 2 points: (1) it's a ripoff, that's certainly been contested in this thread. (2) the right thing to do is license it or at least acknowledge t
by Steko 15y ago
I guess there's 2 points:
(1) it's a ripoff, that's certainly been contested in this thread.
(2) the right thing to do is license it or at least acknowledge that the font isn't original. Here's what Matias said at the event yesterday: "Meet Roboto. It's a totally new typeface ... Built from scratch"
- ajross 15y agoPerhaps it's because of the use of the loaded term "ripoff". That's a troll's term; don't be surprised if you get into flames when you use it. But the core issue here is that you don't understand the typography industry. Typeface vendors have been cloning and selling each other's work since long before fonts were something rasterized on a computer. Helvetica happens to be one successful font, and it's spawned a huge number of clones. You're probably aware of Arial, but there's also Nimbus Sans, Swiss, Triumvirate (yes, I used Google to look those up, but I'm pretty sure the list gets into the dozens). So Helvetica Neue and Roboto are new entries in the family. Apple chose the former and plugged it needlessly via marketing. Google hired a font designer (for reasons that likely have to do with the ability to open source the result, c.f. the Droid Sans fonts earlier, or the Bitstream Vera family in desktop linux) to do their clone, and likewise plugged it needlessly. That you insist on making some kind of platform flame out of this is beyond me. It's just not interesting.
- Steko 15y agoShorter ajross: it's ok to ripoff things but it's not ok to call a ripoff a ripoff. "But the core issue here is that you don't understand the typography industry." The core issue here is you want to make this about me. It isn't. You don't know the first thing about what I do and don't know. "So Helvetica Neue and Roboto are new entries in the family." Yes, put the dominant san-serif font in publishing over the last 30+ years and a clone that debuted yesterday on an equal footing -- that's an incredibly fair and honest summary of the situation.
- beej71 15y agoThe core issue here is you want to make this about me. It isn't. You don't know the first thing about what I do and don't know. Well, you seem to think that basing a font on another is a ripoff, and that's the bit on which the parent poster is basing his assertion. Many of us feel it is not a ripoff. Helvetica, however popular, was not the first of its kind, and most average people wouldn't be able to tell it from Akzidenz-Grotesk, created some 60 years earlier. Almost every major foundry has a Helvetica clone. If this is a big deal, it was a big deal before the relatively minor addition of Roboto.
- beej71 15y agoGruber said he wouldn't call it a Helvetica rip-off. (Though, for the life of me, I can't imagine why he thinks Arial is a rip-off, and Roboto isn't.)