Behind the design: A deep dive into Aptos | Hacker News Reader

Behind the design: A deep dive into Aptos

microsoft.design

31 pointshaxfenx21 comments

It cracks me up when Microsoft posts these infinitesimally niche design projects/articles, where they pretend to care about good design, and then utterly fail to deliver it systematically across the organization, let alone even fractionally.

Remember when Google paid hundreds of freelancers a lot of money to come up with Material, and then how even that fizzled out?

I can't think of a single Google interface that isn't on Material, though Material is on its 2nd or 3rd design iteration now.

That's a lot of words to not even show the typeface clearly at different sizes...

Isnt the entire blog in that font?

> ClearTypefont display technology

Did it get renamed? I thought it was just called ClearType?

Looks like a typo for ‘ClearType font display technology’.

Is this font designed for HiDpI displays? It really looks bad on my fullhd laptop and on my 32 inch 4k monitor.

In what way does it look bad? Historically, digital-focus fonts have been drawn specifically to handle very lo res displays, or very small print applications (optical embellishment, ink traps, etc)… but given that type designers are notoriously detail oriented and that font files are collections of vectors, I can’t see a reason why the design would lead to these effects. Ironically (since this is a Microsoft post) Windows often mangles type display, so can browser settings and CSS defaults/resets.

For clarification, that was a “in what way?” to get more information, not to dispute that it looks fugly for you.

It’s also possible this commenter is seeing a fallback default font if Atpos is not available / didn’t download correctly on their system configuration

It may as well be down to a matter of taste, but I found it quite harder to read.

I tried to find what exactly i dislike about it, and the impression I get is that the weight and the spacing (kerning?) is inconsistent on the line. It reminds me a bit of linux desktop before the availability of decent free fonts.

> In what way does it look bad?

For example, on my 27” 4k display with 150% DPI scaling, I can’t easily distinguish commas from dots.

I’ve been using displays like that for a decade now. Aptos is the only font with that issue.

It seems that neo-grotesques have fully supplanted the humanist typefaces in modern designs, with Aptos joining Inter and San Francisco. I wonder if Microsoft will replace Segoe at some point.

Microsoft loves switching from one bad thing to another bad thing.

Is it possible to easily download the full suite of Aptos variants?

Did they commission expanded designs for the other four like they did for Aptos? Are there monospace or serif versions available?

Office will download the full suite of variants on request.

For other download options (including licensing/redistribution for use outside of Office/Microsoft 365), it looks like Microsoft's usual deal with MonoType Foundry applies to Aptos as well and that you can make purchases at Fonts.com.

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/typography/font-list/aptos...

> Are there monospace or serif versions available?

One of the section titles in the article is:

"For your alternative pleasures: serif and monospace fonts"

I believe that the question was linked to the previous one; out of the five sans-serif designs commissioned by Microsoft, are the serif and monospace versions available for the other four.

I was also interested, but I believe that if these were commissioned, they have not been made public.

With regards to OP's other question: 'Is it possible to easily download the full suite of Aptos variants?', I believe the answer is 'no', unless you're prepared to go clicking random 'download' links on sites of dubious legitimacy.

There's some discussion here on how you can access the fonts when they are downloaded by Office, with an appropriate note that the legality of this may depend on your jurisdiction, but it is fairly certainly a breach of the Font License: https://www.reddit.com/r/GoodNotes/comments/15zpsh2/anyone_k...

It also does not seem to be possible to separately license Aptos through the licensing portal linked by Microsoft in the Aptos font details page: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/typography/font-list/aptos, https://www.fonts.com/content/microsoft-typography

Thank you for understanding and answering my question so thoroughly!

It's in the article, but tl;dr yes

I read the whole article before asking and just re-read it again. I don't see answers to either of my questions. I'm guessing from other clues in the article the answer to my second question is "no".

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