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Comment by kps | Hacker News Reader

The ‘custom’ font has been identified¹ as Grilli Type GT America² with minor spacing change and a Twitter logo in the PUA.

¹ https://twitter.com/jeffjose/status/1425626162219286529

² https://www.grillitype.com/typeface/gt-america

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Interestingly that means Twitter text is no longer fully portable. If you copy some text from Twitter, you specifically need Chirp to render it properly or else characters like their special logo character will be broken for all other fonts 

Because they're using the "Private Use Area" of the font improperly...

Maybe I'm paranoid but I'm feeling like this is an intentional decision in order to push other fonts/foundries to start adding the Twitter logo as a standard Unicode character. Basically bypassing the need for consensus by just forcing the matter and cementing their logo in typography standards.

So, the same as literally every other font that uses PUA (which is the majority of icon fonts).

Have you ever seen nerd fonts? This is not a new idea at all:

* https://www.nerdfonts.com/

* https://fontawesome.com/

I don't think this will push fonts/foundaries to add the twitter logo any more than I feel pushed to use the twitter logo in handwriting. Fonts are very nice in that the user still enjoys a high level of choice in the matter. Heck, even the twitter nonsense could be fixed with a stylus/tampermoney script of one or two lines.

This seems a little paranoid, yes. :) What text do you envision copying from Twitter that's going to specifically include their special logo character? It's not going to be in anybody's tweet text.

> Because they're using the "Private Use Area" of the font improperly...

Uh, isn't putting your own characters in Unicode's private use area specifically what that area is for? Isn't that where fonts that have dingbats unique to them, for instance, would put them?

Not likely perhaps, but could this be one way to retain more copyright over tweets in the future?

Most companies based on user generated content try to claim ownership over it by way of agreements. That has always been murky legal territory and it's not easy to know what value they have.

If the proper rendering of content was made dependent on proprietary fonts, that could be one way to exercise control over where that content can be used.

It's not impossible that making users pick proprietary emoticons could have economic value. Remember where you heard it first...

Not a lawyer, but if the Unicode Consortium even tried to add their logo to the specification, wouldn't Twitter have to actively sue to stop them or risk having their trademark genericized?

Gut check: are there currently any trademarked symbols in Unicode? I can't think of any offhand, and it I find it difficult to imagine it happening for precisely that reason.

The well-known laundry symbols are trademarked apparently, and while there is a proposal to include them into Unicode, this might in fact be blocking it…

These are trademarked for other reasons than a company logo though, and I don't really see the point in including company logos (which might change or disappear tomorrow if they go bankrupt or are taken over by another company—and then what with the company logo in Unicode?).

Apple has been doing this for a while and it hasn't had much effect outside devices which run their software: 

To complement srfvtgb's point, even official unicode characters are not guaranteed to be included in all fonts. Having the glyph disappear on other platforms will probably be accepted as a fact of life, especially as it's a corporate logo.

It looks like they've put a picture of an apple in the Private Use Area as well at U+F8FF. Weird; there's no need for the PUA there; just pick (heh) U+1F34E (red apple) or U+1F34F (green apple).

It's for compatibility with the Apple logo that is displayed on iOS devices when that codepoint is rendered.

I enjoy the pettiness of not using apple’s actual logo.

That’s a holdover from MacRoman.[1] If you’re on a Macintosh, Option Shift K at least on the standard US layout. Still comes up in Apple docs and user forums.

[1] http://www.alanwood.net/demos/macroman.html

Yes, welcome to Corporate Typograhism™ where big corp takes an already existing (copyrighted) font -- change it a little -- then release it as their own.

Some Copyright is more Copyright than others...

The implication that this is a practice being used to skirt copyright is wrong. In almost all cases the font foundry is commissioned by a company to produce a distinct (or not so distinct as the case may be) variant of a typeface/family, licensed to them for their use - as an alternative to having the foundry create an entirely new typeface from scratch.

The point I'm making is that you can simply modify an already existing font "just enough" for it to be considered a new work.

This is essentially what happened with Arial w/ Helvetica; and companies have been doing this ever since to create new licenses that they can control.

We are drowning in Grotesk/Sans-Serif/Helvetica type fonts! Do we really need another "Big Tech Sans"? Or rather, why can't Twitter just use X? xD

At least there is no copyright on the alphabet.

Yet.

Ironically making it not even that unique amongst "social networks", since Depop adopted GT America as their brand typeface back in 2017. Whilst Depop is technically a shopping app, it's one with a heavy skew towards social networking functionality.

Though to be fair, Depop uses GT America Extended and Expanded, rather than Standard.

Ah, another serif-less, proportionally spaced font. Quite hard to notice the differences.

It's very similar to Roboto. Noticeable differences side by side, but very similar.

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