Hacker News Reader

Comment by optymizer | Hacker News Reader

The older I get, the more skeptical I become. Kudos to the author for releasing their project, it looks like a lot of effort went into it, so I hate to sound overly negative, but I just can't help wonder if there is a practical reason for the US government to develop its own font?

Is Sans Serif Fonts the department where the US government can really make a difference, or is this just a designer who happened to get a job with the US government and designed a font because they always wanted to and now they got the opportunity?

View on HN

> Is Sans Serif Fonts the department where the US government can really make a difference

Isn't this a pretty basic "appeal to worse problems" fallacy?

I don't think so.

The way I understand the "appeal to worse problems" fallacy is: "Y is worse than X, so why work on X if we haven't solved Y yet?"

In this case, I see X as a solved problem (perfectly appropriate Sans Serif typefaces exist) and Y as unsolved, whereas the fallacy treats both X and Y as unsolved.

So its appeal to worse problems masked by false dichotomy (solvedness is a continuum, not a binary state)?

I'm not the parent, but now you have a disagreement (it's not solved; solvedness is a continuum) not a fallacy.

I don't think it's in good faith to assume that because parent said "perfectly appropriate Sans Serif typefaces exist" that the implication is that solvedness is a binary; the implication could just has easily been that the problem is sufficiently solved so as to not matter, which is a disagreement about where to draw a line, not an abuse of logic.

I sympathize with the premise of your argument but disagree with you conclusion in this case. High quality typefaces are fundamental to any digital product within the government, commercial, and public sectors. In my opinion, this is a great contribution to the commons.

The font was made via adjustments to an existing font https://github.com/impallari/Libre-Franklin so I doubt this was one designer's dream project.

Why bother having an architect of the Capitol, then? Why bother building government buildings out of stone when wood is cheaper? Appearances matter: would you want to do your taxes with Comic Sans?

The choice was never between Comic Sans or New Government Font.

There are a plethora of established sans serif typefaces available under various licenses, as seen on this page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sans_serif_typefaces

These have existed well before someone said "let's create Public Sans!". It would be nice to know what the reasoning was. The Github page only goes into the details of how Public Sans is different from Libre Franklin.

As a taxpayer I personally am pleased that this is at least one place the government isn't subsidizing some corporation for private gain at my expense. Even if a foundry licensed the font to the government for free, it would be free advertising for that entity. This is one area where I think it makes excellent sense for the government to have done something on its own. The surprise is that it actually looks decent.

Many (most?) of those typefaces are commercially licensed, and can't serve as a universal "default" for typography across all the USG's web properties. Additionally: almost none of them are in OS/browser font stacks, so using them would incur logistical problems in addition to licensing.

There are two problems with that reasoning. First: it is clearly contradicted by the inclusion of Source Sans Pro and Merriweather, both licensed under the SIL OFL and developed by third parties, in the USWDS list of components. Second: creating another font that isn't in operating systems and WWW browsers does not solve the latter problem.

* https://github.com/uswds/uswds-for-designers#fonts

* https://designsystem.digital.gov/components/typography/

* https://github.com/adobe-fonts/source-sans-pro

* https://github.com/SorkinType/Merriweather/blob/master/READM...

Switching to Public Sans solves none of the problems you're pointing out.

According to the Public Sans's Github page, "Source Sans Pro" was the USWDS default, which is a SIL font (so no licensing issues) and is also not in the OS/browser font stack.

I don't understand your second point. Public Sans isn't in OS/browser font stacks, either. What makes its inclusion more likely than, say, a 15 year-old open source font like DejaVu Sans?

I took the parent comment to be saying, "look, there are all these preexisting sans typefaces, why not just take one of the ones on this list". The answer: because they'd have to arrange to pay, and to source them from the commercial services that make them available.

I agree that there are other typefaces they could use! I was mostly commenting on how a list of faces that includes Avenir, Univers, and FF Meta was probably not the best summary of the available options.

> would you want to do your taxes with Comic Sans?

Q: Who would be prepared to do their taxes with Comic Sans if taxes were lower for those who did?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com