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jdsalaro @beehaw.org

A Quick Look into Microsoft’s New Default Font

Hey Folks!

We've been playing and discussing Calibri, Aptos ( Bierstadt ), Grandview, Seaford, Tenorite and Skeena over on Tildes and I figured you folks would enjoy clicking around and seeing what the differences between them actually are.

I wrote the article, so let me know if there's something you'd like to see as well :D

Cheers !

40 comments

  • I don't mind Calibri, but Aptos does look like an improvement. I particularly like the serif added to the lowercase L... it has always annoyed me how that and uppercase I look exactly the same in many fonts. It's one of the reasons why I'm partial to fonts with serifs.

    • but Aptos does look like an improvement

      I think so too! Did you click through the Lorem Ipsum examples? Aptos is much easier on the eyes even in dense paragraphs.

      I particularly like the serif added to the lowercase L

      For the record, my calling those serifs has been a point of contention. To me Aptos feels like a semi-serif, not a sans-serif, although it's officially one! However, it's been suggested to me that I should do away with the serif terminology and call them simply stroke terminals!

      Still mulling over this.

    • OK, debate solved, serifs -> stroke terminals

    • Oh my god yes! future generations will be shocked that it took us that long to solve that particular problem.

  • On that paragraph about prominence, what I do notice is that the letters are way more closed, with less noticeable gaps, for example with a letter 'c'. To those with weaker eyesight, the letters may be seen as an 'o'. But a great article and I liked the comparisons.

    • Now that you say that, I liked Aptos' G, but now I dislike it because it'll likely make things harder for people with poor eyesight.

  • I fell in love with Tenorite.

    • Why is that :D ?

      Not that I disagree with you, as it's also my favorite, but just wanting to hear your reasons :)

      • Oh, it'll be easy! Everything I'm about to explain is written by its authors in a Microsoft note.

        • The first and most important thing is the character line thickness. It's almost the same everywhere.
        • The second is "crisp-looking shapes and wide characters". The gap between the characters is wider than in Aptos.
        • The third is sharper lettering and fewer curlicues.

        =

        Look at the characters, for example, "a", "e", "g". They have bulk shapes with a minimum of lines compared to Aptos. And now for my personal reasoning.

        What is the most common case of reading the folk will have? It's lack of light or twilight (subway, auto, office, home room, etc.). It's a small screen size (smartphone or laptop). It's a low PPI. This is the distance of 20-35 cm, or about a meter, to the screen. These are eyesight problems and astigmatism. These are the points (and more!) you must consider when creating a font.

        Here's my example. I have pretty good eyesight and a little astigmatism (only need to wear glasses when working long hours). I mostly surf the internet using a 17" laptop. I sit a meter away from the screen. That said, I have good illumination.

        While using serif fonts, my eyes get tired after hours of reading. This is because astigmatism causes characters to have a subtle shadow at the edges of the lines (if there are pixel artifacts on display, it doubles the effect!). So fonts like the EB Garamond are generally unreadable for people like me.

        Also, the brain needs a fraction of a second to figure out what the character is. E.g. the Tenorite's "a" and the Aptos' "a". I don't confuse it with anything else when looking at the Tenorite's "a" and it goes much smoother while reading. The characters don't blend into one mess for me.

        As the authors said, they created a font "comfortable to read at small sizes onscreen". If it's comfortable on small screens, it will be the same on larger screens. On a 32" screen, almost all fonts will be OK. I could increase the font size on the small screen, but then it would be uncomfortable to read because of the smaller amount of content.

        Based on studies, the better the font reads, the worse we are at memorizing information. But there's not a lot of actually significant information on the Internet, and I do more writing than reading. So that's not my point.

        Thanks for a recommendation of Comic Neue from one old Reddit's thread. It's a wonderful font for reading in low reading environments. Seems Tenorite has replaced it for me, as it looks more common and has thicker outlines.

        P.S. This is just my own geek standpoint, I didn't/am not in the typography business.

  • Wow I always new I hated Calibri but looking at it up close REALLY made me hate it. I don’t know what it is about that font but I just can’t stand it.

40 comments