Beyond Helvetica: The Real Story Behind Fonts in iOS 7 | Hacker News Reader

Beyond Helvetica: The Real Story Behind Fonts in iOS 7

typographica.org

76 pointsshawndumas52 comments

I know this isn't what the article is about, but the new lightweight typeface looks like absolute shit on a non-retina iPad 2. I was very surprised indeed by that (and also by how stressed my iPad 2 seems running the basic OS - animations are labored, scrolling is jerky; it's like Symbian, or old-school Windows Phone). Early beta, fair enough, but the font problem is worrisome and I don't see it getting fixed. I'm curious how it looks on an iPad Mini.

For what it's worth, you could try enabling "Bold Fonts" in the Accessibility settings.

Good suggestion, I'll give that a try. Thanks.

Apple already bumped the font weight up. Now it’s much closer to something you would see on iOS7 (but it obviously still uses the same system described in the article, so font weight scales with font size).

It’s an easy enough fix once you have a system like this in place. Really, focusing all your attention on that is missing the forest for the trees.

I wouldn't worry about performance too much yet- it's still in beta after all.

I would. But thats whats happens when you have old hardware and software is still progressing at an impressive pace. In fact, many of iOS7 features are only possible because of those advances (layered interfaces, the typography engine, for example). I wouldn't expect the ipad2 to last you much longer than a year (if that..).

I would expect Text Kit (I assume that's what you are referring to by typography engine) to seriously out perform Web Kit on older hardware, such as iPad 2.

UITextView with Web Kit backing has to do so much shit just to render attributed strings. It's slow as hell. Text Kit provides a clean layering atop Core Text with a fast way to update the model.

When I installed the iOS6 beta on my iPad 3, maps literally ran at something like 15fps until close to release. Now it's fine. I think iOS7 will probably be similar.

I'm curious—does it still look like absolute shit if you rotate the screen?

There's no LCD subpixel smoothing in iOS, so it shouldn't make a difference.

Perhaps it's just a WebKit bug, but I've definitely noticed this before in an older iPad: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3220662/uiwebview-font-is...

I've noticed this effect also, and across a number of apps, on both an iPad 4 and an iPad mini. It's most obvious on the mini due to the low pixel density on the iPad mini.

I can't read the mini in portrait mode mostly because I haven't found a font+size combo that I find acceptable.

Yes, it still looks pretty bad. It looks like it matters a lot more with the thinner font in iOS 7 whether the straight line strokes sit across a physical pixel boundary or not.

They are also using more computationally-heavy transitions and such. Perhaps Apple wants to pursue a look that suits only powerful devices with high-resolution screens.

I wear glasses and light fonts on light backgrounds suck hard. I noticed Mr. Ive doesn't wear glasses – at least in public. May be that's the problem.

As for Helvetica, I have nothing against as it is a fine typeface. A little overused, maybe that's why some trendy folks despise it so intensely. All the typography theory apart, in the end typefaces are all about personal taste.

Anyway, I don't know why they didn't go with something like Univers with configurable weight in the settings app. If they've chosen this path this problem simply wouldn't exist.

Mr. Ive is not the only employee of Apple

>> "configurable weight in the settings app"

They have configurable size in the settings. The reason I don't think they can do weight is that they use it to show different things in the UI (e.g. actionable text/buttons are heavier than content).

I'm beginning to wonder if tiny/slight fonts are a conscious plot to inoculate a product against too much use by uncool old people... sort of the reverse of places that use high-pitched whines to annoy youngsters away.

I'm sorry, but who are these guys to judge any sort of font? Lower-case glyphs in their body font are as wide as they are tall and have really weird kerning. It's virtually unreadable.

I can't speak too much to this as its still technically NDA. But the whole font engine is rather changed. This almost looks like a leak of some NDA type material but dynamic type is actually quite cool. Additionally the "thinness" is largely not that big of a deal with the retina displays. Past that I'm not saying anything more.

It is really nice to have some... designed text that you can hook into and use that the user can control. It scales really well readability wise, I'll just say screenshots don't quite do text in ios7 justice, and it is really easy to make it more readable if it isn't to your eyes.

But I'm sure they'll always be neue helvetica haters in general so meh, whatever, use/hate what you want to.

For what it's worth; anything publicly disclosed during WWDC isn't under NDA. The keynote talked about the hew UIKit and text rendering engine.

True, but I don't think that covers code samples does it?

"virtually unreadable"

The tendency among typography enthusiasts to label all sorts of things unreadable or illegible has descended into farce.

Legibility and readability are technical terms in the field of typography.

From what I've seen, the new iOS typography is adequately legible, but somewhat lacking in readability. To proclaim similar descriptions -- which might or might not be exaggerated -- fascicle is very condescending toward typographers and other design professionals.

When people go further in their negative characterizations, the terms stop being used so technically. To call type completely unreadable or illegible is generally an intentional overstatement, and it's understood as such by members of the design community.

It's like calling code shit. Is it literally shit? No -- but saying it is doesn't make a developer incompetent or even wrong. It's a clearly contextual statement, and it's rightly interpreted as such. Please give typographers some credit and don't assume we're somehow overreacting.

Seems[1] that the font default may have changed in beta3?

[1]: http://www.marco.org/2013/07/08/a-thicker-hope

Naturally, as an NDA-bound developer, I cannot confirm this. Let’s assume it’s true for this post. ↩

Lulz

Yeah. I got a kick out of that too and accidentally snorted some english breakfast into my nose.

NDA? What NDA?

I mean, I get that people are breaking it left and right, but using slides from Apple's WWDC decks as your illustrations is a bit much.

And we should care why? Is it our job to enforce Apple's NDA on a random blog?

When the random blog is getting upvoted on HN because they have exclusive information and the "real story", that is exclusive because they are breaking the NDA and using Apple's slides as illustrations, that's pretty shitty.

I just see it as a less moral version of linkbait.

"Pretty shitty" for who? Not for me...

I mean, maybe if I were sitting on a blog post for now and just lost out on my precious internet points I'd be upset, but otherwise why would I be bothered?

Pretty shitty why? Because it's marginally inconvenient for a large multinational to make it's developer information available freely? Oh, the humanity.

It's not _our_ job to enforce the NDA between Apple and other people, no, but we can certainly call out people for breaking their contract. The more people start ignoring their agreements, the closer Apple might get to canning their whole early-release developer program, which is a bad thing for all of us.

Talk about it all you want, just don't fuck it up for everyone else.

Sue me.

No worries, smackfu... I am going to sacrifice an Android phone at a genius bar tonight and perform the necessary appeasement dances to make sure the Apple gods aren't angered.

This way, I'm certain we'll continue to have fruitful iOS beta releases this season, despite OP's actions.

Why do you worry about that?

If Apple has a problem with that they will deal with it. That’s it. You don’t have to play policeman for them. I don’t see what’s wrong with talking about this in the meantime. It’s just some stupid NDA Apple doesn’t even enforce. Who cares?

I see it as a matter of respect, not about enforcement or suing people. To be a big fan of Apple, then to distribute the info they ask nicely to not be shared... just doesn't make sense to me. I guess other people are just like "eh, whatever, I don't care about companies, man", and that's their right of course.

And anyways, don't we all think it's a good thing that they don't heavy-handedly enforce the NDA?

No slides from Apple’s decks were used in our article at Typographica. Don’t know how you got that misinformation. All the images were created from scratch using info that has been reported elsewhere.

TL;DR: If you can't read Apple's new awesome fonts correctly, you need to get your eyes checked.

I have an extremely mild astigmatism and unless I put my glasses on the new Helvetica Super Skinny just disappears into a fuzzy mess. Even the characters on the keyboard. This was never a problem before.

Same here. The new beta fares much better, and the Bold option totally alleviates the issue.

Huh, I hope we get that system on OSX too.

The real news is that optical scaling will soon be available on OS X, with a simple system call. This is pretty neat for anyone writing graphic design apps.

For all its hate and overuse, Neue Haas is used for one reason and one reason only: simplicity.

When you read a block of Garamond in a classic book from the early 19th century, you feel the serifs. They guide you from word to word, but they're there and you see them and feel them structuring the text into lines and establishing the x-height easily for readability. Easier to read, but you're still conscious of the typeface.

The beauty of Neue Haas Grotesk compared to, say, Futura or Avenir is that it disappears. You cannot tell that you're reading a typeface, you're only seeing words. It's a highly readable font but with a very simplistic design. This is also evident with Lucida, but its letterforms are slightly more ornamental and wouldn't fit well on a mobile device.

There's a reason Neue was chosen for iOS 7. It's simple and clean, just like its design leader likes it to be.

It’s grey and boring and too self-similar to really be super readable.

It’s ok enough, I guess, but if Apple wanted to they could actually improve on it. The church of Helvetica is annoying.

Who exactly are you trying to impress by calling Helvetica "Neue Haas"?

I had to look up what 'Neue Haas' was. For all the extolling of simplicity and clarity in the original post, it wasn't very clear.

For all the extolling of simplicity and clarity in the original post, it wasn't very clear. You get +1 internet points for that.

I'm looking forward to hearing his thoughts on the upcoming NeXTSTEP 10.9.

While Neue Haas was the original name for Helvetica, it does seem to be two different font's in Chrome (OSX): http://i.imgur.com/ufxsfKh.png

Looks like it's not two different fonts, just that Neue Haas isn't recognized as a font name by OSX, so it falls back to the default font - a serif, in this case.

Neue Haas Grotesk and Neue Helvetica (known as Helvetica Neue in iOS) are not the same typefaces. Neue Haas Grotesk is the original name for the typeface but it underwent many changes over the last 60 years before it became what we most commonly see today in digital form as Helvetica and Neue Helvetica. NHG would probably be a better choice for iOS due to its looser spacing and optimizations for text. See Font Bureau’s NHG site for more info: http://www.fontbureau.com/nhg/history/

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