That's why switching fonts shouldn't be taken lightly. As the renowned typographer Tobias Frere-Jones explains, type pervades so many user interactions, from the mundane choices like OK/Cancel, to sensitive content like personal data. After all, typography isn’t just an element of user interface on some type-heavy mobile apps, it is the user interface. San Francisco may not be a daring choice for a design-led company, but when creating a font for small screens, variation takes a backseat to clarity. It also had a taller x-height, which means the lowercase letters are taller, which makes it a little more legible.” The typeface was built to be dynamic as screen size changes, so, too, does the typeface. In an interview with WIRED’s David Pierce, Alan Dye, Apple's head of human interfaces, explained how the typeface was optimized for the Watch’s tiny screen: “That led to the typeface that's a little more square, but with gentle, curved corners,” Dye said. That's hard to avoid without using serifs (the little flicks and lines you see at the end of some letter strokes), which can muddy up an already cramped screen. Just think about how many times you've mistaken a capital I for lowercase l. No doubt, designing for small screens is a challenge. Tall and skinny, San Francisco is space-efficient, like Google’s custom typeface Roboto, which you could consider a close cousin to Apple's font. Based on the German typeface DIN, San Francisco gives characters more breathing room, which will make it easier to read on relatively tiny mobile screens. While still an austere sans serif, San Francisco is bolder and friendlier than Helvetica Neue. The differences between Helvetica and San Francisco are subtle, even to the trained eye, but they’re there. Now, just two years later, Apple is updating its system font yet again. Apple ultimately ditched Neue Light in favor of the meatier Helvetica Neue. The typeface was too light, too thin for small, lower-res mobile screens. The choice was almost universally panned by designers. Two years ago, with the launch of iOS 7, Apple announced it would be updating its system-wide font to Helvetica Neue Light. The company used Lucida Grande on OSX from 2000 to 2014.
Apple has in more recent history relied upon off-the-shelf fonts for its user interfaces. "When it comes to design in general," Leming says, "Apple is in their own universe."Īpple does a history of championing type design, most notably commissioning typefaces from Susan Kare in the 1980s, but it’s just that-history. The company has moved the needle so far in so many areas, that it simply doesn't matter.
He has quibbles, for instance, with some of San Francisco's numbers-the top of the "6," for instance, loops so far down that it can be mistaken for an "8." But, he says, such things can be overlooked. San Francisco isn't perfect, says Tal Leming, a typographer and programmer at Type Supply. After all, Apple has been so dominant in other areas that anything less than stellar typography is going to draw critics. Google introduced its custom font, Roboto, in 2011, and Spiekermann developed Fira Sans for Mozilla a few years back. “Apple is really, really behind when it comes to typography,” says famed German typographer Erik Spiekermann.
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