San Francisco — The Ultimate System Font?
Discover why the San Francisco font, initially designed for Apple Watch, is set to become the default system font for iOS 9 and OS X 10.11, offering exceptional readability and design innovation.
The San Francisco typeface first gained attention with the announcement of the Apple Watch. It was meticulously crafted to optimize legibility on the watch's small screen, ensuring even the tiniest text remains clear and comfortable to read. Now, this font has made its way into iOS 9, replacing the familiar Helvetica Neue. But what makes San Francisco truly stand out?
Designer Ventin Zan, through his personal project "Typography in Detail," has thoroughly analyzed San Francisco's core attributes. Summarizing his insights, this font excels in readability and user comfort.
One key feature contributing to its readability is the height of the lowercase letters, which in San Francisco is 75% of the uppercase height—slightly larger than many other fonts. Additionally, the font boasts wider internal spacing within letters like "a" and "e," along with an increased aperture (the openness of characters), enhancing clarity.
The screenshot below (click to view full resolution) showcases San Francisco in various sizes, styles, and weights. Impressively, even at a tiny size of 8 pixels, the letters remain distinct and easy to read.
Undoubtedly, this new font is a significant success, addressing many of the critiques professional typographers had with the classic Helvetica included in iOS and OS X, which was less ideal for long texts and small sizes. However, Apple’s designers will likely need to put in additional effort beyond simply swapping Helvetica Neue for San Francisco. The new font is noticeably more compact and currently lacks some essential special characters—it must be seamlessly integrated into iOS and OS X to maintain the visual appeal users expect and to ensure full functionality as the system font.
Although Helvetica only lasted a year on Macs, the idea of unifying the "typographic language" across all Apple software products is appealing. Moreover, San Francisco evokes the compressed style of the Chicago font, which was the system font for Mac OS up to version 9. In a way, Apple is returning to its roots, don’t you think? :)
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