What an interesting thread to read. "Typography aficionados" are one of the most ardent and vocal subcultures within the Hacker News community. Any given post may be hijacked at any time, for a meta-discussion about the font choices on that post's linked web page.
When a post actually IS about a new font, people dissect that latest microscopic riff on Helvetica like whiskey snobs describing a spirit's nose and mouthfeel.
However, a strong cross-cutting theme on HN is "hating Reddit even though you obviously spend a lot of time there". It's a clash of the titans, and a real role-reversal... this may be the first time I've ever seen a post about fonts mostly hijacked by something else instead.
It's only when two highly-prized priorities are pitted against each other that you can really determine which is higher up on the priority list. I guess now we know. Hating on the outgroup is a strong trait amongst humans, perhaps even stronger than font snobbery.
Does the world really need yet another font with a purely rectangular lowercase 'l'? There. I guess you can see where my priorities lie.
It's a shame, because I thought font snobbery might encourage some interesting discussion here.
But on your second point -- there are two lowercase "l" glyphs, of which the default option is not purely rectangular. Without any stylistic set activated, "1Iil" are all visually distinct.
First of all, this is a surprisingly nice font. Modern, clean, it has personality but it's legibile. Well done!
It has some similarities to Product Sans that Google has been rolling out in its interfaces [1] -- suggesting Futura [2], but Google's version is clunky and backwards-looking, while Reddit Sans is far more elegant and up-to-date.
I do wonder if they're going to use it for the body text of conversation threads though? Because it still feels more like a display typeface than body text, with its highly geometric styling. It looks great in the tag bubbles they show, and it'll be superb for headlines and things, but I'm not sure I'd want to read comments in it -- but their blog post suggests that's what it's for.
Using this geometric styling is what Google's done with all of its Workspace interface now (Gmail, Docs, etc.) and I think it's been a big mistake. Futura has always been best as a display font, not for body text, and I don't understand why Google has moved from Roboto to Product Sans for things like menus or e-mail subject lines.
Reddit has always had a ton of stupid irrelevant side projects. Remember "creddits"/ReddCoin, the "social cryptocurrency" they were developing? Hard to believe that was a decade ago. Harder to believe that in retrospect, they should have just done it, been ready when the crypto hype wave came and exited/IPO'd as billionaires.
>> Yes, Snoo (and our brand colors and typography) is getting a makeover to help better reflect how our growing user base uses Reddit. These changes will help redditors worldwide continue engaging in conversations with each other.
And yet they're not addressing how non-redditors engage with content on their site. Any day you want to stop nagging about the app or just show me all the dang comments would be great. In the meantime, there's always teddit.
Part of it has to do with licensing costs but also "brand-able" ownership.
Say if you use Arial or Helvetica for your logo, then it's a generic typeface easily reproduced by whoever else that has them installed on their computer. So often, many brands for their logo take a generic font and customize it to make it their own. However, when you customize a font for a logo the font file itself is not customized, just the vector version of it for the character of the brand name. So if you want to extend the usage of the font style to say headline text or advertising text, then you need a whole custom built font. Custom fonts cost money, but picking a pre-existing "designed" typeface from other type foundries cost a lot more than getting a custom font. So two birds with one stone, you get a unique font for your brand and don't pay additional licensing since you own it.
I didn't either, until I tried typing a capital F, followed by a period, followed by a (regular, non-curly) quotation mark, on Twitter, and saw how it condensed it down far too much into an ugly mess—"oh, designers just have too much time on their hands."
I'm curious about it too, I'd love to read something by someone with more specific insight than I have.
I know that people love to make fonts: it's a really common hobby activity and people make incredible fonts all the time just for the hell of it. I don't really know how that translates so commonly into the institutional will to do it that every company seems to have. I can kinda guess but it's just conjecture.
Hipster design teams. Typography lets them be "artists", returning to bohemian roots. In reality, they're just designing apps around dark patterns or whatever the product management team thinks is righteous. Companies can't say no, they're in demand, so its really a "20% project".
Readit News
When a post actually IS about a new font, people dissect that latest microscopic riff on Helvetica like whiskey snobs describing a spirit's nose and mouthfeel.
However, a strong cross-cutting theme on HN is "hating Reddit even though you obviously spend a lot of time there". It's a clash of the titans, and a real role-reversal... this may be the first time I've ever seen a post about fonts mostly hijacked by something else instead.
Does the world really need yet another font with a purely rectangular lowercase 'l'? There. I guess you can see where my priorities lie.
But on your second point -- there are two lowercase "l" glyphs, of which the default option is not purely rectangular. Without any stylistic set activated, "1Iil" are all visually distinct.
It has some similarities to Product Sans that Google has been rolling out in its interfaces [1] -- suggesting Futura [2], but Google's version is clunky and backwards-looking, while Reddit Sans is far more elegant and up-to-date.
I do wonder if they're going to use it for the body text of conversation threads though? Because it still feels more like a display typeface than body text, with its highly geometric styling. It looks great in the tag bubbles they show, and it'll be superb for headlines and things, but I'm not sure I'd want to read comments in it -- but their blog post suggests that's what it's for.
Using this geometric styling is what Google's done with all of its Workspace interface now (Gmail, Docs, etc.) and I think it's been a big mistake. Futura has always been best as a display font, not for body text, and I don't understand why Google has moved from Roboto to Product Sans for things like menus or e-mail subject lines.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Product_Sans
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Futura_(typeface)
Specimen site: https://redditsans.s-ings.com/
And yet they're not addressing how non-redditors engage with content on their site. Any day you want to stop nagging about the app or just show me all the dang comments would be great. In the meantime, there's always teddit.
https://www.redditinc.com/assets/images/site/_1440xAUTO_crop...
* https://fonts.google.com/knowledge/introducing_type/introduc...
[1]: https://github.com/google/fonts/issues/6812
https://www.redditinc.com/blog/evolving-the-reddit-brand-a-m...
"We’re introducing new bespoke typefaces, Reddit Display, and Reddit Sans."
Say if you use Arial or Helvetica for your logo, then it's a generic typeface easily reproduced by whoever else that has them installed on their computer. So often, many brands for their logo take a generic font and customize it to make it their own. However, when you customize a font for a logo the font file itself is not customized, just the vector version of it for the character of the brand name. So if you want to extend the usage of the font style to say headline text or advertising text, then you need a whole custom built font. Custom fonts cost money, but picking a pre-existing "designed" typeface from other type foundries cost a lot more than getting a custom font. So two birds with one stone, you get a unique font for your brand and don't pay additional licensing since you own it.
I know that people love to make fonts: it's a really common hobby activity and people make incredible fonts all the time just for the hell of it. I don't really know how that translates so commonly into the institutional will to do it that every company seems to have. I can kinda guess but it's just conjecture.
Discompliments to /u/spez.
L != I