For you to read the secrets of Apple San Francisco fonts

After the official release of OS9, the controversy over the new font has not stopped. The apple-font San Francisco, which first appeared on Apple Watch, replaced the previous Helvetica Neue as the default font for IPHONE/IPAD series devices. The new Mac system El Capitan, which is still in beta, also says it is set as the default font.

Frankly speaking, Apple has always been the tradition of self-developed fonts, IOS7/8 as a new system, research and development cycle on the stretched, choose the existing Helvetica Neue is also very logical thing, for the development of more modern, more fit their style of fonts and leave room is not surprising.

Helvetica

San Francisco

The San Francisco and previous Helvetica Neue are distinctly different in style, and the more modern and sharper edges make it very well matched to 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 set of fonts as early as the first generation of the iphone was released as a built-in font, but not the default system font, until iOS7, Helvetica Neue is the upper. When Mac OS X 10.10 was released, the previous default font, Lucida Grande, was replaced with the Helventica Neue, which is a modern and classic enough font to be seen in the eyes of Apple's designer. But what prompted Apple to replace the set of all-pampered fonts?

Helvetica is weaker on small size display

The answer is not complicated, and in fact the problem is already apparent in the Apple Watch development phase, which is one of the important reasons why San Francisco is a default font. And with the Yosemite default font changed to Helvetica, many designers stand out to accuse the new font is difficult to identify in the smaller font size, and emphasize Helvetica and is a reasonable choice.

"Helvetica sucks" by Erik Spiekermann

When you select the Helvetica font to enter text at a smaller font size in low-definition situations, a little blur makes the text difficult to identify. But the newly developed San Francisco will be much better in this case, so you'll probably understand the default font choices for Apple Watch.

But then again, today's smart device screen PPI has reached a level beyond the printing effect, whether it is the iphone, ipad or Mac is already a Retina screen, then why Apple is so much effort to develop this font, and the default font of each platform to the SAN Where's Francisco?

San Francisco is not a single font

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

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

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

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

San Francisco Font Family

As I said above, a font such as Helvetica can easily be confused in small sizes such as a, E, and S.

Display and Text sub-font families

The San Francisco Text series fonts are used for small screens, which ensure a small size display on the screen compared to the San Francisco display.

San Francisco is a dynamic font

As the system default font, the San Francisco font is dynamically optimized, and the system automatically switches Display/text two sub-font families as the font size changes, usually 20pt is a toggle boundary size.

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

In this set of fonts, many of the details are impressive, and what makes me most unforgettable is the display of the colon (:). When the colon is in the text, the dots below the colon close to the baseline of the text (the base line of the English letter), but when the same colon appears in the middle of the 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 designed for today's digital display, whether it's a large or a small screen, whether it's large or small, and it's displayed accurately and clearly. Helvetica Series Font was first born in 1957, followed by a variety of non-digital era of the product. However, Helvetica is still widely used in various fields, as a classic and has a long-term vitality of the universal font, it will undoubtedly continue to classic.

But San Francisco is not necessarily weaker than Helvetica, its uniqueness is that it is a system and perfect digital age font, its intelligent setting and the friendliness of the screen display determines that the digital era of "Aboriginal" has a unique advantage.

Take a look at the following font details to get a deeper feel

For you to read the secrets of Apple San Francisco fonts