Talking of loving a font ... I recently starting using Avenir Next for a lot of work, especially email where it is my default, it is so pleasing on the eye for me. Anyone else like it, or is it just me?
Nope, not just you. Avenir and Avenir Next are classic choices. Based on that you should check out Proxima Nova as well. It's not free (as far as I know, though the webfont version is probably included as part of a fee), but it's been making big waves in digital typography for years now.
This site uses it or something very similar for body text.
I love digital and print typography. Typeface design can be a painstaking process. A lot of the very good ones are expensive, some of them thousands of dollars for a single typeface family license. But there are some incredibly well drawn ones that are very affordable. Some are even free.
Nope, not just you. Avenir and Avenir Next are classic choices. Based on that you should check out Proxima Nova as well. It's not free (as far as I know, though the webfont version is probably included as part of a fee), but it's been making big waves in digital typography for years now.
This site uses it or something very similar for body text.
I love digital and print typography. Typeface design can be a painstaking process. A lot of the very good ones are expensive, some of them thousands of dollars for a single typeface family license. But there are some incredibly well drawn ones that are very affordable. Some are even free.
Thanks I'll check that out. I've been into fonts since the 'desktop publishing revolution'. My company sold Mac DTP systems and supplied training to many companies including major newspaper groups and magazine publishers back in the day. As part of my induction into the field Apple had me spend time in a traditional print company that still had hot lead as well as phototypesetting equipment. Postscript was certainly a paradigm shift back then.
Talking of loving a font ... I recently starting using Avenir Next for a lot of work, especially email where it is my default, it is so pleasing on the eye for me. Anyone else like it, or is it just me?
Avenir is a fantastic font. As a designer, I use it all the time.
Thanks I'll check that out. I've been into fonts since the 'desktop publishing revolution'. My company sold Mac DTP systems and supplied training to many companies including major newspaper groups and magazine publishers back in the day. As part of my induction into the field Apple had me spend time in a traditional print company that still had hot lead as well as phototypesetting equipment. Postscript was certainly a paradigm shift back then.
Now that you mention hot metal, it's interesting how some typefaces survived (and didn't) the transition to digital print. Bembo, for example, didn't fare so well until Bembo Book was released, which recaptured a lot of its sparkle and chunky quality – it's strength on the page.
We're undergoing a similar transition in terms of type for the screen (now the web, rather than low-res displays.) While Verdana and Georgia remain the most meticulously hinted fonts ever made – they still set the standard even today, the current generation of high-res and very dense ppi displays means that most any font will look great. Mind you, a lot of what wasn't designed for or transitioned to the screen doesn't look so good on my 24-inch Samsung display from 2008. However, fonts that don't have great hinting but which were still designed with greater legibility in mind in the first place (large x-height, open counters, etc.) tend to look less messy and spindly.
The big push recently has been in the area of e-reader (and e-reader app) typography. Justification with proper hyphenation and better font selection figure prominently here.
Good point, which alphabets does San Francisco cover? Just the Latin, plus close derivations presumably?
Interesting question. I would have to say the ones closely related to Latin but I haven't downloaded the font set yet.
Excuse my ignorance, but does arabic, cyrillic, hanzi and other different alphabets have wide font support and variances? Would a San Francisco style of kanji make sense?
Kanji wouldn't make sense to me even if it was San Fransico. You have to understand the characters before readability comes into play.
It's a bit of history for true Apple fans. I just loaded it and it is very nice and it's hard to believe it is 31 years since I printed out Apple's first San Francisco font on my Apple ImageWriter attached via AppleTalk to my Mac Plus!
Now that brings back memories. I also remember what a huge investment that hardware was back then.
OK, now I understand. What little I have seen (having now looked at the AI link to a comparison of the iPhone unlock screen in Helvetica and San Francisco), the chief benefit is the taller x-height (readability) and more rounded and condensed numerals (less boxy/more friendly).
A very slight tweak, but an improvement, nonetheless
The AI link is not useful. That image contains almost no text, and the largest text in it, which is the display of the time, isn't in San Francisco, so it's nearly entirely unhelpful.
Go look at a decent sample of San Francisco on a Retina screen, and compare to Helvetica Neue, before judging it. It's vastly more readable in the contexts we will see it in. It's a real improvement.
Now that brings back memories. I also remember what a huge investment that hardware was back then.
Very true. A basic DTP system with Mac SE30, Apple LaswerWriter, PagMaker and all the trimmings was £6,000 if memory serves me correctly. Not long after that a fully tricked out Mac IIfx could run that and more alone, then you had the color Barco monitor and an A3 Sharp color scanner, and often an Agfa black and white too for half tones, and you were well north of £12,000. Now, would you prefer a 1200 or 2400 dpi typesetter and RIP?
I love this typeface, but doesn't it looks like too much to Roboto?
Talking of loving a font ... I recently starting using Avenir Next for a lot of work, especially email where it is my default, it is so pleasing on the eye for me. Anyone else like it, or is it just me?
I started using Avenir Next (and Avenir Next Condensed) when they first showed up--Mavericks I believe. A very clean update to Futura. I'd hoped Apple would have gone that route for their system fonts. I downloaded the new SF-UI font family today--it's 21 faces and completely Unicode, which may answer some of the questions posed earlier in the thread. Interestingly, El Capitan shipped with 33 faces named SFNS . . . . But "Get Info" says the SF is for System Font, not San Francisco. Font book lists the new SF-UI Text as 11.0d45e1-BETA with a creation date of 5/21/2015. Good times for font lovers.
Originally Posted by CrowleyGood point, which alphabets does San Francisco cover?
I'm only a casual home user, & not a professional, programmer or anything like that, but I would expect the normal countries alphabets should be covered, like English, French, German, Italian, Spanish, Russian, Arabic, Indian, Chinese, Japanese, etc. Then do not forget some countries, such as India & China, have several languages & alphabets that might be covered too. (See a previous SF article for an example)
Creating all of these characters would of course take time, let alone getting them right so that they work out in all forms, i.e. bold & italic etc, & all sizes / points as well. So Helvetica Neue could have been used as a temporary measure until SF was ready as it looks similar.
This will help watch sales. I know of a bunch of older folks who wont even consider the watch because of the difficulty of reading. Happens to everyone's eyes as they age.
I have downloaded the font using the link in this article, viewed it through Font Book and also successfully installed it as the system font on my MacBook Pro 2011 running 10.10.3. The weird thing is that certain characters are clearly different to those in the screen grabs of the menu on this page and to the characters on the ned Retina MacBook keyboard, namely the larger round characters like G, O, C, Q etc. On the keyboard and your screen grab, they look quite squashed with almost flat sides whereas on my system after installing, they remain much more rounded. Generally the rest of the characters look OK and it's clearly changed from the previous system font. I can't attach an image to this post so cannot illustrate this but has anyone else experienced this or know why it might be?
I have downloaded the font using the link in this article, viewed it through Font Book and also successfully installed it as the system font on my MacBook Pro 2011 running 10.10.3.
The weird thing is that certain characters are clearly different to those in the screen grabs of the menu on this page and to the characters on the ned Retina MacBook keyboard, namely the larger round characters like G, O, C, Q etc.
On the keyboard and your screen grab, they look quite squashed with almost flat sides whereas on my system after installing, they remain much more rounded.
Generally the rest of the characters look OK and it's clearly changed from the previous system font.
I can't attach an image to this post so cannot illustrate this but has anyone else experienced this or know why it might be?
The Watch version of San Francisco was originally called that and some people took that font off the watch and put it on the iPhone/iPad and Mac to see how it would look. Apple made variations to it for iOS and OS X with rounder edges and that version is now called San Francisco and the Watch version with flat sides is called San Francisco Compact:
I didn't like the flatter sides on the Watch font characters - it's more a functional choice than aesthetic for a small display and not necessary on larger displays like iOS devices and Macs. The rounder version for iOS and OS X is closer to Helvetica Neue:
At a quick glance, the biggest difference people will probably notice is that the letters have more space between them. If you look at the word Carrier in the following, 'arr' in Helvetica on the right in iOS 8 are almost touching but are spaced out more on the left:
For the most part, the non-compact version of SF looks very similar to Helvetica Neue, which is a good thing IMO (SF on the left):
The easiest way to tell which ones you're looking at are that rounded characters like c, e, g, d, b have flatter edges in SF Compact and SF has rounded dots where Helvetica has square dots and a trailing flourish on the letter 'a'.
Thanks for the excellent explanation. I am wanting to use the compact version in Photoshop to simulate the lettering on the new retina MacBook key caps and this leaves me with 2 problems...
Is the compact version available for OS X, and if so, where from (I'm not a developer)?
How do I use it in Photoshop as the SFNS display .ttf files I downloaded from Github show up in some apps like TextEdit, but not in Photoshop CC. Have the fonts been customised to only work on the OS interface?
Comments
Nope, not just you. Avenir and Avenir Next are classic choices. Based on that you should check out Proxima Nova as well. It's not free (as far as I know, though the webfont version is probably included as part of a fee), but it's been making big waves in digital typography for years now.
This site uses it or something very similar for body text.
I love digital and print typography. Typeface design can be a painstaking process. A lot of the very good ones are expensive, some of them thousands of dollars for a single typeface family license. But there are some incredibly well drawn ones that are very affordable. Some are even free.
Thanks I'll check that out. I've been into fonts since the 'desktop publishing revolution'. My company sold Mac DTP systems and supplied training to many companies including major newspaper groups and magazine publishers back in the day. As part of my induction into the field Apple had me spend time in a traditional print company that still had hot lead as well as phototypesetting equipment. Postscript was certainly a paradigm shift back then.
Avenir is a fantastic font. As a designer, I use it all the time.
Thanks I'll check that out. I've been into fonts since the 'desktop publishing revolution'. My company sold Mac DTP systems and supplied training to many companies including major newspaper groups and magazine publishers back in the day. As part of my induction into the field Apple had me spend time in a traditional print company that still had hot lead as well as phototypesetting equipment. Postscript was certainly a paradigm shift back then.
Now that you mention hot metal, it's interesting how some typefaces survived (and didn't) the transition to digital print. Bembo, for example, didn't fare so well until Bembo Book was released, which recaptured a lot of its sparkle and chunky quality – it's strength on the page.
We're undergoing a similar transition in terms of type for the screen (now the web, rather than low-res displays.) While Verdana and Georgia remain the most meticulously hinted fonts ever made – they still set the standard even today, the current generation of high-res and very dense ppi displays means that most any font will look great. Mind you, a lot of what wasn't designed for or transitioned to the screen doesn't look so good on my 24-inch Samsung display from 2008. However, fonts that don't have great hinting but which were still designed with greater legibility in mind in the first place (large x-height, open counters, etc.) tend to look less messy and spindly.
The big push recently has been in the area of e-reader (and e-reader app) typography. Justification with proper hyphenation and better font selection figure prominently here.
Kanji wouldn't make sense to me even if it was San Fransico. You have to understand the characters before readability comes into play.
Now that brings back memories. I also remember what a huge investment that hardware was back then.
OK, now I understand. What little I have seen (having now looked at the AI link to a comparison of the iPhone unlock screen in Helvetica and San Francisco), the chief benefit is the taller x-height (readability) and more rounded and condensed numerals (less boxy/more friendly).
A very slight tweak, but an improvement, nonetheless
The AI link is not useful. That image contains almost no text, and the largest text in it, which is the display of the time, isn't in San Francisco, so it's nearly entirely unhelpful.
Go look at a decent sample of San Francisco on a Retina screen, and compare to Helvetica Neue, before judging it. It's vastly more readable in the contexts we will see it in. It's a real improvement.
Very true. A basic DTP system with Mac SE30, Apple LaswerWriter, PagMaker and all the trimmings was £6,000 if memory serves me correctly. Not long after that a fully tricked out Mac IIfx could run that and more alone, then you had the color Barco monitor and an A3 Sharp color scanner, and often an Agfa black and white too for half tones, and you were well north of £12,000. Now, would you prefer a 1200 or 2400 dpi typesetter and RIP?
I love this typeface, but doesn't it looks like too much to Roboto?
Talking of loving a font ... I recently starting using Avenir Next for a lot of work, especially email where it is my default, it is so pleasing on the eye for me. Anyone else like it, or is it just me?
I started using Avenir Next (and Avenir Next Condensed) when they first showed up--Mavericks I believe. A very clean update to Futura. I'd hoped Apple would have gone that route for their system fonts. I downloaded the new SF-UI font family today--it's 21 faces and completely Unicode, which may answer some of the questions posed earlier in the thread. Interestingly, El Capitan shipped with 33 faces named SFNS . . . . But "Get Info" says the SF is for System Font, not San Francisco. Font book lists the new SF-UI Text as 11.0d45e1-BETA with a creation date of 5/21/2015. Good times for font lovers.
I'm only a casual home user, & not a professional, programmer or anything like that, but I would expect the normal countries alphabets should be covered, like English, French, German, Italian, Spanish, Russian, Arabic, Indian, Chinese, Japanese, etc. Then do not forget some countries, such as India & China, have several languages & alphabets that might be covered too. (See a previous SF article for an example)
Creating all of these characters would of course take time, let alone getting them right so that they work out in all forms, i.e. bold & italic etc, & all sizes / points as well. So Helvetica Neue could have been used as a temporary measure until SF was ready as it looks similar.
The weird thing is that certain characters are clearly different to those in the screen grabs of the menu on this page and to the characters on the ned Retina MacBook keyboard, namely the larger round characters like G, O, C, Q etc.
On the keyboard and your screen grab, they look quite squashed with almost flat sides whereas on my system after installing, they remain much more rounded.
Generally the rest of the characters look OK and it's clearly changed from the previous system font.
I can't attach an image to this post so cannot illustrate this but has anyone else experienced this or know why it might be?
The Watch version of San Francisco was originally called that and some people took that font off the watch and put it on the iPhone/iPad and Mac to see how it would look. Apple made variations to it for iOS and OS X with rounder edges and that version is now called San Francisco and the Watch version with flat sides is called San Francisco Compact:
http://codemotionapps.com/san-francisco-display-vs-text-compact-vs-normal-a-brief-review/
I didn't like the flatter sides on the Watch font characters - it's more a functional choice than aesthetic for a small display and not necessary on larger displays like iOS devices and Macs. The rounder version for iOS and OS X is closer to Helvetica Neue:
At a quick glance, the biggest difference people will probably notice is that the letters have more space between them. If you look at the word Carrier in the following, 'arr' in Helvetica on the right in iOS 8 are almost touching but are spaced out more on the left:
For the most part, the non-compact version of SF looks very similar to Helvetica Neue, which is a good thing IMO (SF on the left):
The easiest way to tell which ones you're looking at are that rounded characters like c, e, g, d, b have flatter edges in SF Compact and SF has rounded dots where Helvetica has square dots and a trailing flourish on the letter 'a'.
Thanks for the excellent explanation. I am wanting to use the compact version in Photoshop to simulate the lettering on the new retina MacBook key caps and this leaves me with 2 problems...
Is the compact version available for OS X, and if so, where from (I'm not a developer)?
How do I use it in Photoshop as the SFNS display .ttf files I downloaded from Github show up in some apps like TextEdit, but not in Photoshop CC. Have the fonts been customised to only work on the OS interface?
Actually I just found the solution. Once I knew what I was looking for.
The full compact version is downloadable here http://www.nicholastodor.com/blog/use-apples-new-san-francisco-font-on-your-website
It also works fine in Adobe CC.