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Comment by jmwilson | Hacker News Reader

Their own legibility study shows it's about around the same as Verdana: https://i.imgur.com/M0C3TkY.png (excerpt from the PDF in the download .zip, vertical axis is misidentifications). Their design goal was beating their current font (CDS), which seems a bit of a sandbagged goal if you look at the sample in the report. I wonder if we've reached a plateau of legibility for technical fonts after identifying the easy wins in typeface design for screens.

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Not disagreeing, but note that Verdana requires a license for certain kinds of commercial use (I think). https://www.fonts.com/font/microsoft-corporation/verdana/lic...

You have mistaken the development version (V0.2) for the final version. A subsequent graph in page 13 shows that there had been indeed a big improvement over CDS.

You misread the post, as you are both saying the same thing.

I guess I'm not good at reading nuances ;-) As you can see from the originally linked plot, B612 V0.2 is not universally better than Verdana (say, t is much worse). The original paper also states (p. 13) that the plot was used to guide the development, so they clearly knew that V0.2 is not as optimal. Henceforth I have assumed that the OP thinks B612 tried to optimize easier bits (explicit) and did it badly (implied). I should have been overly sarcastic...

For those not aware, Verdana happens to be the font Hacker News uses.

If you have Verdana. Otherwise the fallbacks are Geneva and then sans-serif.

But is Verdana provided as a webfont?

On mobile, almost no one can see Verdana.

> On mobile, almost no one can see Verdana.

But it's included in iOS (http://iosfonts.com)?

For me, Hacker News uses whatever I have set as my sans-serif font, which at the moment happens to be B612.

I’m surprised there’s a need for this kind of thing or even much of a difference between most sans serif fonts. It seems there are dozens if not hundreds of open source programming fonts which are all quite legible.

Indeed, and none as legible as a serviceable serif font.

Legibility was a solved problem literally centuries ago.

> Legibility was a solved problem literally centuries ago.

For print, maybe? But digital displays are a whole different kettle of fish which didn't exist centuries ago.

How much of sans-serif's digital advantage was predicated on low-resolution displays compared to print?

(Not a rhetorical question; I'm genuinely curious. What was true for NTSC-interlaced isn't necessarily true for 8K.)

> I’m surprised there’s a need for this kind of thing or even much of a difference between most sans serif fonts.

I mean look how asymmetrical the characters in this typeface are compared to almost every other sans serif typeface. The way the body of the characters flairs out opposite the ink traps is pretty wild. It almost looks like it was designed using deep learning or something, because how the hell could any human possibly come up with those forms.

Take a look at some of the "dyslexic" fonts. The asymmetry is very useful in dynamic situations: low/high/variable G environment, shaking, smoke in cockpit, O2 mask on, loud noises, lost eyewear, multiple distractions (alarms), etc.

Huh? I wouldn't even notice it's a special font if not for the fact that I clicked the article to their website because it was on HN. The edges of the characters look slightly different to me, but otherwise it just looks like most other sans-serif fonts to me.

Maybe I need to get my eyes checked. (although last time I went doctor said I had better-than perfect vision in both eyes)

Nope. There's nothing wrong with your eyes. Some people are just better at noticing certain things, compared to others.

Assuming you're in your 30s, statistics says your hearing is about the same as mine, but my ability to distinguish chords is better. (Meaning: if I had to bet either way, I'd say this - I could lose the bet.)

> I wonder if we've reached a plateau of legibility for technical fonts after identifying the easy wins in typeface design for screens.

I mean most likely the real design goal was to create a cool futuristic looking typeface that would make the planes themselves feel more technologically advanced. I have no doubt legibility was one of the main requirements, but let's not kid ourselves on why this was really commissioned.

They did a great job though. I'm not a typography expert or even a designer, but to my untrained eye this looks like one of the most original and visually impressive typefaces I've seen in a while.

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