Typophile - UI Fonts - Comments

Thanकs for answering the

fontana — Mon, 21 Apr 2008 12:02:29 -0700

Thanकs for answering the question mrestकo I tried on Windows XP and yes I can change the Variable GUI/UI.

Thanकs aकma / guifa / Marक Simonson / deanomite for your discussion about Macs. Are there any Linux views about this?

I have questions about GUI/UI fonts and this is about what are their font design specifications? What are differences between those fonts that are GUI/UI and those that are not? Please tell me all the variables that कeep GUI/UI fonts apart from those fonts that are not them? Are there any tools and experiences required for constructing GUI/UI fonts? Could you refer me to some websites, GUI/UI fonts, any free GUI/UI fonts etc? What are the GUI/UI font criterias? Can you looक at a font and say it will translate to a good GUI/UI font?

Would be grateful for some answers to these questions.

I’m with akma, I do

deanomite — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 08:58:13 -0700

I’m with akma, I do appreciate a distraction from productive work and distraction for its own sake...just like this discussion. It keeps me sane.

Kaleidoscope! That was what

akma — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 08:13:32 -0700

Kaleidoscope! That was what I was thinking of.

It did indeed represent a distraction from more productive work, Mark, but sometimes I appreciate a distraction that gets me out of the rut my thinking has settled into. And sometimes I just appreciate a distraction for its own sake.

I used to be a fan of UI

Mark Simonson — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 06:46:28 -0700

I used to be a fan of UI modification in the pre-MacOS X days. There was a program called Kaleidoscope that let you completely change the look of the Mac UI. It was a lot of fun, but eventually I realized it was little more than a distraction, a way to avoid doing real work. The UI was fine the way it was and all those themes were only skin deep—it didn’t change or improve anything fundamental in the way the UI worked. It actually made things worse: A good UI should be invisible, and putting a new skin on it makes it visible, at least until you get used to it, and becomes invisible again. Until you go to a different computer with a different theme.

I feel the same about system UI fonts in OS X. I’m not crazy about them, but they do the job adequately and don’t call attention to themselves, which is as it should be.

And I’m quite sure those

guifa — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 05:59:46 -0700

And I’m quite sure those utilities were Apple supplied as well. I recall doing the same on my Mac back ages ago (which is kind of weird to think I’ve been using the Mac now 19 years...and I’m only 22)

«El futuro es una línea tan fina que apenas nos damos cuenta de pintarla nosotros mismos». (La Luz Oscura, por Javier Guerrero)

Back in the old days, when

akma — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 05:43:43 -0700

Back in the old days, when we didn’t have all these fancy colors in our monitors and Steve Jobs had never met Jonathan Ive, we had handy-dandy utilities that switched Mac interface elements easily — and (if I recall correctly) you couldn’t change interface elements on Windows.

I think the tides changed for Apple with OS X, maybe OS 9; I believe you could still fiddle with the interface in OS 7.

@fontana Believe it or not,

mrestko — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 04:56:38 -0700

@fontana
Believe it or not, I’m using Vista which I actually don’t find too horrible. It’s probably not as good as XP, but it’s what I have...

In terms of changing the font, it’s pretty simple. Check out the following screenshots:

Then choose one you like and see how it looks.

Yes, I changed them. I

loremipsum — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 15:43:06 -0700

Yes, I changed them. I purchased the wonderful Linotype Metro Office specifically for that purpose. At 10pt, used everywhere in the system with ClearType and 2304x1520 resolution, it’s extremely pleasant and legible.

How would you alter the

fontana — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 12:57:48 -0700

How would you alter the GUI/UI fonts on Macs and Windows?

Would you alter GUI/UI fonts per software application or would you change centrally?

Would GUI/UI fonts also cover the windowing screen on Macs and Windows thus would the file names and icon descriptions fonts also alter?

I would be grateful for some कnowledgeable people to answer these questions.

Interesting blog piece on

sii — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 06:35:44 -0700

Interesting blog piece on the Lucida + Helvetica mash-up UI’s being seen in Mac apps...

http://blog.cocoia.com/2008/04/12/swiss-interface-syndrome/

“Seems natural.” lol!

dberlow — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 06:16:41 -0700

“Seems natural.”
lol! There is nothing natural, to me, about being compelled to make the choice of choice at the purchase of the OS. Maybe we have different natures. I, like many before me and you (most likely), don’t, naturally, take tools and use them as they are, favoring tailoring to our own needs, uses and environments. (Looking around at the millions and millions of wheels, don’t you wonder what lazy genius invented that stupid phrase about reinvention?)

“Case in point being the iPhone, maybe?”
The iPhone seems to me an extension of the Apple philosophy of no design taste is design, i.e. a clean, clear, blank, is better than taste. I think this’s been imported from British design over the last decade plus. The first Mac, the Newton, the work stations, all Apple’s previous products had personality in appearance. The customized Garamond Apple used, was the typographic embodiment of that old look.

Helvetica is the typographic embodiment of the blank look... except if the size/resolution combination fails in a given size, then mash it (?), or head to a Myriad that works for a slightly different blank look. This is fine specific to Apple’s design, don’t get me wrong, ’How much personality can a mass-produced hand-held device allow?’ is an evolving door. But, to enforce that philosophy on work stations, laptops, and presentations, which I feel are closer in use and appearance to furniture than to a phone is, I think, a misconstrued semi-infinite loop, naturally.

Cheers!

It leaves one wondering, if

Gerry K — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 12:06:38 -0700

It leaves one wondering, if both companies ’claim’ to be responding to ’user desires’, how is it that two totally different user species have developed. This is hardly the only case, with the respective browsers heading north and south on fonts relative to each other.

After installing the recently released Safari for Windows, I was struck by the difference in how type looks in the Apple browser than in applications that use Windows font rendering. If I prefer the edge-smoothing in Windows, it may just be that I like what I’m used to. I’m about to spend more time on Macs than I ever have before because of a video class I’m taking. It will be interesting to see if my preference changes.

For menus, file listings,

Gerry K — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 12:05:48 -0700

For menus, file listings, and icon titles, I’ve switched to Nina. It was designed by Matthew Carter and hinted by Tom Rickner for Microsoft as a UI font for handhelds. It squeezes in more character per inch than its close relatives, Tahoma and Verdana, without sacrificing their legibility at small sizes. At FontMarketplace.com, a single-user license for Nina is $4.99 per font or $17.99 for the four-font family. This month, you can get the complete family even more economically in the Ascender Eco-Friendly Font Pack, which is currently on sale for $14.99. The font pack has seven other fonts besides the Ninas, along with some templates and images.

My take, working with UX

sii — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 11:08:10 -0700

My take, working with UX designers (as they like to be called) is that more obstacles are being placed in the users path with respect to UI customization. I think this has to do with the increasing level of power that UX designers are able to exert - they are able to make the case that user font choice will break their UI. They can perhaps point to increased support costs and increased testing matrix required when you allow user-font choice in UI. Case in point being the iPhone, maybe?

“It leaves one wondering,

aluminum — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 06:15:49 -0700

“It leaves one wondering, if both companies ’claim’ to be responding to ’user desires’, how is it that two totally different user species have developed.”

Seems natural.

MS tries to make it’s products everything to everyone.

Apple does the opposite. It makes it products one way and one way only and assumes it’s the best way.

Both appear to be valid methods...just different.

UI Fonts

mrestko — Sun, 13 Apr 2008 16:50:57 -0700

So, I’m probably one of the few Windows users here (there must be others, right?) and I’ve recently been fooling around with the fonts the UI uses to display menus and title bars, etc. I think it’s kind of nice to vary the look of my computer a bit, gives it some pizzazz.

Right now I’m using Interstate, just for kicks. Anyone else change their system fonts?