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Comment by mikl | Hacker News Reader

Nice, but I wonder why Vercel is doing this. Is there some clause in the standard VC contract, that once you’ve raised enough capital, you have to commission your own typeface?

We’re kinda getting spoiled with options, now every medium to large tech company seems to be releasing their own typeface.

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I dunno about VCs/ tech companies, but there are many companies with custom typefaces they use for their marketing materials, not just logos. Many of them are close to existing fonts so you don't notice. Alaska Airlines has AS Circular[1], e.g., but only type nerds would see the difference from Circular. Domino's has one, BBC[2], CNN , Coca-Cola (not just the swirly logo)[3], National Park Service has some[4], and of course Disney has Waltograph.

1 https://auro.alaskaair.com/typography/overview

2 https://www.bbc.co.uk/branding/reith-font/

3 https://www.coca-colacompany.com/content/dam/company/us/en/v...

4 https://www.nps.gov/subjects/hfc/nps-graphic-identity-and-st...

It's a money-saving measure. Pay a typographer once and own your own font, vs. having to pay Monotype or whoever a yearly sub with endless licensing issues.

If it were just a money-saving measure, I'd imagine they'd have continued using Inter with whatever complementary monospaced font they had been using.

Vercel's motivation appears to be that, unlike other fonts, Geist was designed with "precision, clarity, and functionality at its core", which "enhances the visual experience of developers and designers", which in turn finally "empowers them to effectively communicate their ideas".

Even if Inter wasn't a fit, and they really specifically needed an open-source font that looked like Helvetica (er, sorry, that drew "inspiration from the renowned Swiss design movement") with a more distinguishable I/l/1 and a monospace version, IBM Plex is free.

To iterate on mikl's question: also nice, but I wonder why IBM did this.

Plex at least riffs on IBMs earlier typography efforts with the classic Selectric typewriter balls, notably the double story g.

At last!

Yes, agree with you that it's a conspicuous consumption kind of thing.

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