5 ms·

The best UI typeface goes unnoticed

39 points by ot 12y ago

err4nt 12y ago
Excellent examples in the article, I will be using these illsutrations to demonstrate these ideas to people when I talk about legibility for the web. I have recently been very impressed with Fira Sans, and it may have the most beautiful sans-serif italics I've seen in a long time!
nosuchthing 12y ago
Great article, but a seemingly unfair comparisons granted the examples provided seem to have no baseline for differentiating legibility between the fonts. The author may have chosen the same "font size" but font size has no standardization a size 8 font may be dramatically different in pixel height between different fonts.
joshuapants 12y ago
I've never really liked it when people with strong opinions about design decide to use black text on an eye-searing white background. This article made a lot of great points, but was actually painful to read.
vishaldpatel 12y ago
So, why did Apple switch from Lucida Grande to Helvetica?
- PhantomGremlin 12y ago
  Probably because they have hundreds (if not thousands) of people working on OS X, and they need to "do something" to justify their paychecks. It's the same reason that there's no longer a toggle for "Translucent menu bar" in the Desktop preference in Yosemite. Instead it moved elsewhere and does something almost the same, but not quite as good. Or why they removed the "Dock" entry from the Apple Menu. They're showing that they're "improving" the product. But it's make-work, they're not improving anything. I'm sure that all of these things were discussed for countless man-years in countless meetings. But Apple made somewhere in the neighborhood of $70B in profit last year, so it's not like they can't afford paying these people. OTOH, all the silly bugs in Yosemite ... apparently there isn't enough money to pay good, competent people to chase and fix them.
  - valleyer 12y ago
    or all the good and competent people are busy fixing the problems made by the first set

39 points by ot 12y ago

Excellent examples in the article, I will be using these illsutrations to demonstrate these ideas to people when I talk about legibility for the web. I have recently been very impressed with Fira Sans, and it may have the most beautiful sans-serif italics I've seen in a long time!

nosuchthing 12y ago

Great article, but a seemingly unfair comparisons granted the examples provided seem to have no baseline for differentiating legibility between the fonts. The author may have chosen the same "font size" but font size has no standardization a size 8 font may be dramatically different in pixel height between different fonts.

joshuapants 12y ago

I've never really liked it when people with strong opinions about design decide to use black text on an eye-searing white background. This article made a lot of great points, but was actually painful to read.

vishaldpatel 12y ago

So, why did Apple switch from Lucida Grande to Helvetica?

PhantomGremlin 12y ago
Probably because they have hundreds (if not thousands) of people working on OS X, and they need to "do something" to justify their paychecks. It's the same reason that there's no longer a toggle for "Translucent menu bar" in the Desktop preference in Yosemite. Instead it moved elsewhere and does something almost the same, but not quite as good. Or why they removed the "Dock" entry from the Apple Menu. They're showing that they're "improving" the product. But it's make-work, they're not improving anything. I'm sure that all of these things were discussed for countless man-years in countless meetings. But Apple made somewhere in the neighborhood of $70B in profit last year, so it's not like they can't afford paying these people. OTOH, all the silly bugs in Yosemite ... apparently there isn't enough money to pay good, competent people to chase and fix them.
- valleyer 12y ago
  or all the good and competent people are busy fixing the problems made by the first set