For you to read the secret of Apple San Francisco fonts

The controversy over the new font has not stopped after the IOS9 was officially released. The Apple font San Francisco, which first appeared on Apple Watch, replaces the previous Helvetica Neue as the default font for IPHONE/IPAD series devices. The Mac new system, which is still in beta, also says it is set as the default font for Capitan.

Frankly speaking, Apple has always been the custom of the development of fonts, IOS7/8 as a new system, research and development cycle stretched, the choice of existing Helvetica Neue is also very logical thing, for the development of more modern, more consistent with their own style of the font to leave space is not surprising.

Helvetica

San Francisco

San Francisco and previous Helvetica Neue are significantly different in style, and more modern and clear corners make it extremely match the display and demand of Apple Watch, so it's a reasonable choice to publish with Apple Watch.

Apple Watch

In fact, Helvetica neue This font has become a built-in font as early as the iphone, but not the default system font, until the iOS7, Helvetica neue is the upper. When Mac OS X 10.10 is released, it also replaces the previous default font Lucida Grande with the Helventica Neue, which shows the position of the modern and classic font in the eyes of Apple's designer. However, what prompted Apple to replace the set of thousands of favorite fonts?

Helvetica is weaker in small size display.

The answer is not complicated, and in fact the problem with the Apple Watch research and development phase is already obvious, which is one of the important reasons for making San Francisco the default font. And with the Yosemite default font replacement for Helvetica, many designers came out to accuse the new font in the smaller size of the difficult to identify, and stressed that Helvetica and is a reasonable choice.

"Helvetica sucks" by Erik Spiekermann

When you choose the Helvetica font in the low definition of the case to enter text in a smaller font size, a little fuzzy, the text is difficult to identify. But the newly developed San Francisco will be much better in this case, so you can probably understand the default font choice for Apple Watch.

But then again, now that the screen PPI for smart devices has reached beyond print, whether it's the iphone, the ipad, or the Mac is already a Retina screen, why does Apple have to expend so much effort to develop this font and replace the default fonts on each platform with sans? What about Francisco?

San Francisco is not a single font

As a system-wide font family, San Francisco is not a single font, and in order to maintain clarity on different platforms, San Francisco fonts have many special designs and features, and if you look closely, the San shown on iOS and OS X There are subtle differences in Francisco fonts.

SF (abbreviated San Francisco font as SF) and SF Compact

The more compact SF compact letters are relatively narrower, with smaller margins and a clearer display on small screen devices such as Apple Watch.

In addition, the SF and SF Compact two sets of fonts are distributed to a series named text and display two child fonts. And that's what Apple says about "visual dimensions." Text series fonts are used for small text display, and display series fonts are used for larger font displays.

San Francisco Font Family

As I said above, letters such as Helvetica, such as A, E, and S, are easily confused by a small size.

Display and Text Child font family

The San Francisco Text-series font is used for small screens, ensuring that the display on a small screen is more effective than the San Francisco display.

San Francisco is a dynamic font

As the default font for the system, San Francisco fonts are dynamically optimized, and the system automatically switches display/text two child font families as the font size changes, usually 20pt is a toggle boundary dimension.

In this setting, designers and engineers no longer need to bother with the use of fonts, just set the Uilabel in the exercise font, then the system will automatically help you match the appropriate font.

Many of the details in this set of fonts are impressive, and what makes me most unforgettable is the colon (:) display. When the colon is in the text, the dots below the colon immediately align to the baseline of the text (the baseline that is aligned at the bottom of the letter), but when the same colon appears between two digits, it is automatically centered on the height.

　　Designed for the digital age

As you can see, San Francisco is a set of fonts that are designed for today's digital display, whether large or small, large or small, to be displayed accurately and clearly. The Helvetica series of fonts was first born in 1957, and the subsequent variants were also the result of the non-digital age. However, Helvetica is still widely used in various fields, as a classic and has a long-lasting vitality of the generic font, it will undoubtedly continue to classic.

But San Francisco is not necessarily weaker than Helvetica, it is unique in that it is a systematic and perfect digital age font, its intelligent setting and the friendliness of the screen determines that the digital era of "Aborigines" has unique advantages.

Look at the following font details, in-depth experience ~