Netflix Sans, a new custom typeface
itsnicethat.com
itsnicethat.com
However, most disappointing and worrying part of font presentation is applications to different movies and TV shows. With the same typeface, they completely lose their identity.
Strong, condensed typeface of House of Cards. 80s-inspired typeface for Stranger Things. Minimal and geometric typeface for OA. Cyrillic alphabet inspired treatment of R in Icarus.
They all were different and appropriate, and here they are all very 2010's generic sans-serif, losing all personality.
I'm happy to see Netflix Sans in UI, but sure hope it doesn't go deeper, into actual show branding.
But agreed, I hope it becomes their UI font and not used in everything out of laziness or some pursuit of functional standardization over emotional aesthetics.
I wouldn't mind a Netflix label in the UI, but watermarking every covers feels gross, it dilutes the personality of each show.
I love Netflix and all but the little name in the corner doesn't mean much.
Here (Japan region), it's fairly difficult to find things with subtitles, which I pretty much need, so I'll take what I can get.
I reported this back in jan 19, and it's still fucked.
For a little background information, I'm mostly deaf, so I generally use subtitles for English (my native language) in English-language programs, so the problems we encounter are likely very different. :)
At this level of handicap, I'm simply happy that the subtitles exist -- I can't say the same for Hulu or Amazon Video.
I've poked Netflix again this week, but really, i don't expect anything. It's not like they respond to the original complaint. Often these services just put up the files given by their contract partners and then walk away. RWBY on crunchyroll has no english subtitles either despite being originally english. Roosterteeth, the creator company, is aware of this and hasn't fixed it in the year since i reported it. To make it worse, the page claims english subs are available.
For evergarden though, torrenting from a dedicated translation group is the only option to get non-broken subs at the moment.
I disagree. With high-resolution displays becoming the norm, I'm questioning why so much of the industry is still stuck on sans-serif fonts for UI, and worse, regressing from humanist sanses to neo-grotesk fonts, which are the worst (seriously, if you have to use a sans, use something like Myriad or Noto Sans... which Apple and Google used to use before they jumped on the neo-grotesk bandwagon).
The only reason to not use a serif font is because at low resolutions, the serifs blur into a mess, but low resolutions aren't an issue anymore. And on top of that, hinting is a thing. Serif fonts have objectively better readability, and subjectively they're much prettier than anything else.
I've been using Noto Serif as my main UI font on pretty much everything for a couple of years now, and it's absolutely perfect. I'll never go back to a sans for UI.
It will be years before TVs as well as desktop monitors are HiDPI in overwhelming numbers. 720p/1080p is pretty much the norm for those now. These fonts are meant to be usable on the vast majority (> 95%) of customer's screens, not just the minority (majority soon) of HiDPI screens.
> The only reason to not use a serif font is because at low resolutions, the serifs blur into a mess, […]
Nonsense. It's also an aesthetic call. We are not just using sans-serif fonts because our screens can't do better; sometimes they just work on their own merits (whether that's legibility or appearance).
This claim is often repeated but questionable at best.
>subjectively they're much prettier than anything else
They might be pretty to you (and this is such a subjective claim that using it as evidence for favoring serif fonts is pointless) but users are pretty used to sans UI fonts at this point, and there's 0 reason to alienate them with something "prettier".
1. Serifs often have uneven stroke weights which make them actually actually harder to read in small sizes (8-15), since the thin parts start to breakdown.
2. Letterforms are more complex and generally create more "visual noise" or the texture of the text gets noisy since you have lot of points and ticks on the screen.
I think serifs can work well on titles that are large, quotes, in print or simple ui like articles where you one column of text, mostly in one size. For UI, especially mobile UI feel like it can be quite jarring in any more complex app.
Legibility also comes from the different factors of the typeface (x-height, open counters, distinct letterforms) not only from the fact that it's serif or sans serif.
Actually, for reading long books some serif fonts will tire my sight faster than sans-serif fonts.
It seems to me font readability design is a lot more complex than simply serif vs sans-serif.
In particular, the uppercase "N", the lowercase "e", and the lowercase "t" do not harmonize. The kerning between the "N" and the "e" needs tweaking.
This imbalance is especially noticeable because the balance between the characters "tflix" is magnificent, a small textual portrait practically worth framing on its own.
Especially on the sample shows, rendered too thin on most, feels cheap, super generic, like a poor man’s Arial.
Could maybe somehow be for legibility on really bad TVs?
It looks pretty good. But both initiatives are retro throwback Design Affectations — "Our Own Helvetica!" — and, for my tastes, it is a little bit twee to apply it over the whole interface. A better executed PT Cruiser is still a PT Cruiser.
It feels like a corporate design macro fashion trend, like ultrathin weight fonts were a few years ago, or square composition photos and enforced circular cropped avatars.
With that said though, even though that particular page looks terrible, I think properly implemented page can look pretty compelling.
Interesting that they'd say "global" when the font shown is just basic English -- no accents, circumflexes, etc.
I'll be really interested if they make their own CJK font as well -- that's a tremendous undertaking.
> With the global nature of Netflix’s business, font licensing can get quite expensive
How does it work? I thought commercial fonts were a one-time purchase, is it different for businesses like Netflix?
> saves the company millions of dollars a year as foundries move towards impression-based licensing for their typefaces in many digital advertising spaces.
It wasn't clear in the article. It said "the arched cut on the lowercase “t” is apparently inspired by the “cinemascopic curve” of the brand’s wordmark". "Inspired by" suggests it is not an exact match.
That's a fancy way of saying "as foundries price themselves out of business"
The slight curve on the lower-t of Netflix Sans actually bothers me because it's the only curve of its kind. The "straight exit strokes" and "flat horizontal terminals" makes it inconsistent. Why not use that curve for the starting verticals of the lower-b, lower-d, or lower-h? [1]
The only objective measure of the value of a typeface for reading comprehension showed that serif faces are overwhelmingly better. The only thing favoring sans-serif faces is fashionability among graphic designers. Making new ones does nothing for anyone except the designer.
http://alexpoole.info/blog/fighting-bad-typography-research/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serif#Readability_and_legibili...