Logo & Brand
Identity Design, Print Design and GUI/UX Design
Fonts In The World of GUI
You only have to look at real-world examples to understand this. Apple’s celebrated “Aqua” interface, used in their OS X series of Operating Systems, is one of the world’s most recognizable, usable and beautiful GUIs available. Undoubtedly, a vital part of the Aqua look is in the font used – Lucida Grande. Such is the popularity and beauty of this font that it has become widely used as the body text font on websites all over the internet. It is, for example, Facebook’s primary font. I also use it on my site.
I
particular passion of mine is Graphical User Interface (GUI) design.
We consciously and subconsciously, always seek the perfect GUI for
Operating Systems. And a very large chunk of what makes a GUI look so usable
and appealing is in the choice of font used.
Fonts In The World of GUI
You only have to look at real-world examples to understand this. Apple’s celebrated “Aqua” interface, used in their OS X series of Operating Systems, is one of the world’s most recognizable, usable and beautiful GUIs available. Undoubtedly, a vital part of the Aqua look is in the font used – Lucida Grande. Such is the popularity and beauty of this font that it has become widely used as the body text font on websites all over the internet. It is, for example, Facebook’s primary font. I also use it on my site.
The
Aqua Interface as shown on Mac OS X "Leopard"
In
the world of Microsoft Windows, the release of their Vista OS also introduced a
brand new GUI named “Aero” – featuring translucent ‘glassy’ windows, glossy
buttons and a brand new system font called Segoe UI. Segoe UI is an
excellent humanist sans-serif that has proven to be very popular and highly
legible to boot. So successful was this font choice that Microsoft decided to
keep it for their subsequent OS release “Windows 7″.
The
"Aero" GUI as shown in Microsoft Windows 7
Fonts
In The World of Linux GUI
Linux,
up until recent times, remained unremarkable when it came to
GUI design. Really, it’s been in the last 2-3 years that we have seen
considerable advances in the GUI of Linux desktops. Ubuntu made strides forward with its “Human”
interface – featuring subtle browns and bright orange icons. Similarly, SuSE
and openSuSE became well-known for their primarily green colour scheme. But
what was missing from the GUI of these two great Linux distros was a
magnificent screen font. Many Linux distros, including Ubuntu and SuSE, adopted
the DejaVu family of
fonts, which is a nice family of fonts but certainly not on a par with Lucida
Grande or Segoe UI.
But
all of that is changing. With the release of Ubuntu’s “Lucid Lynx” LTS OS, we
saw a brand new UI, named “Light”. Ubuntu Lucid shipped with two new default
themes – Ambiance and Radiance – a new icon theme called Humanity, and a
completely new branding overhaul, complete with a new logo and colour palette
of white, orange and “aubergine” purple. The new interface was adored and hated
in equal measure by many but more importantly, whether you hated the look or
not, it signified a new direction from Ubuntu in particular and from Linux
general and that was a move towards mainstream mass usage.
And,
for typeface lovers like me, a further development announced in Mark Shuttleworth’s post on
the new Ubuntu UI was the immediate development of a new humanist sans-serif
designed specifically for Ubuntu. It would simply be called
“Ubuntu” and developed by the famous font foundry Dalton-Maag. The font itself
was not ready for the Lucid release but we should hopefully see it in use for
the forthcoming “Maverick Meerkat” release in October 2010.
Until
that glorious day when the new Ubuntu font is released, I’ve been searching and
experimenting with various typefaces on my desktop. I have accumulated here
what I consider to be the best fonts for screen usages, as well as a couple of
other fonts I’m fond of that are useful for print design. Even better is that
these fonts are free.
Sans
Screen Fonts
Aller
Sans
A
showcase of the Aller Sans font
Aller
Sans was designed for the Danish School of Media and Journalism and
developed by Dalton-Maag – the company currently working on the new Ubuntu
typeface. Aller Sans is an excellent sans font for screen
legibility – it showcases slightly thicker than average strokes and is readable
at all sizes. The font package itself includes properly rendered bold and
italic styles as well as providing two alternative variants as well – ‘Light’,
a thinner version that works nicely for headers, and ‘Display’, a bold
mixed-case style. It’s been properly kerned and hinted for screen use as well.
Curiously, in the few previews I’ve seen of the new Ubuntu font, Aller Sans and
Ubuntu show remarkable similarities. Perhaps this typeface is the precursor to
the new Ubuntu font?
The
font is free for use non- and commercial use.
PT
Sans
Showcase
of PT Sans
A
typeface I found fairly recently, PT
Sans is a remarkable humanist sans-serif with excellent legibility for
screen use. The PT Sans family was “developed as a part of the project
“Public Types of Russian Federation”.
The
fonts of this project have open user license and
can be freely distributed. The main aim of the project is to give possibility
to the peoples of Russia to read and write on their native languages.”
It
bears some resemblance to Aller sans, particular in the numerical characters
where PT Sans has more uniform metrics than Aller Sans. PT Sans has extensive Eurasian
language support and includes, as well as properly rendered Bold and Italic
styles, a ‘Caption’ style for smaller uses and a ‘Narrow’ version for more
economic purposes. Both extra styles are still excellent screen fonts.
PT
Sans is free for non- and commercial use.
Droid
Sans
A
showcase of Droid Sans
Developed
for the mobile phone platform Android, Droid Sans is
undoubtedly one of the best humanist sans-serif typefaces to be released in
recent times. It is practically flawless; the hinting and kerning of the font
is perfect, it’s readable in every size and it’s very, very beautiful.
Droid
Sans is quickly becoming an extremely popular typeface to use, not just for use
in Linux distros, but also many websites are now adopting the font for use in
body text. The Droid font family also includes an excellent monospaced typeface
and serif variations as well. All bold and italic styles are properly rendered
and hinted.
Use
of the font falls under the Apache
License.
M
Plus
Showcase
of M Plus font
To
this day, I still can’t remember where I found the M
Plus font family website, but I’m glad I did. This font family
is huge.
It
contains, and I quote:
Basic
Latin, Latin-1 Supplement, Latin Extended-A, and IPA Extensions. And most of
Greek, Cyrillic, Vietnamese, and extended glyphs and symbols were prepared too.
So the fonts are in conformity with ISO-8859-1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, 9, 10, 13, 14,
15, 16, Windows-1252, T1, and VISCII encoding. In addition, proportional M+ P
Type-1 and M+ P Type-2 fonts were completed with Latin
Extended-B, Latin Extended Additional, and Windows Glyph List 4 (WGL4). And
many Greek, Cyrillic, IPA Extensions glyphs, and symbols were expanded. Those
additional glyphs are included in M+ C provisionality.
The
font family contains 7 styles – M+ 1c, M+ 1m, M+ 1mn, M+ 1p, M+ 2c, M+ 2m, M+
2p – and in a variety of different weights, from thin to heavy. It’s a very
readable font but you can tell it’s still in heavy development – the kerning
needs addressing (too much space between characters at around 10pts) to begin
with. I would, however, definitely keep an eye on the development of this font
family; improvements are being made all the time.
M
Plus is completely free software.
CartoGothic
Showcase
of CartoGothic STD font
For
a while, CartoGothic
STD was my preferred font of choice for GUI design. Its characters’
shapes are very reminiscent of Adobe’s Myriad Pro font
family. It demonstrates a thicker than average stroke and provides properly
rendered bold and italic styles. I feel some work still needs doing on this
font though – the hinting for display use is slightly off and they vertices
need addressing. Still, should this font continue to receive some love I can
see it becoming a firm favorite. A commercial version, which includes more
weights, is available on the developer’s site.
CartoGothic
STD is free for non- and commercial use.
Sans
Header Fonts
Vegur
Showcase
of the Vegur font
Vegur is my typeface
of preference for my company logo and with good reason. It is a gorgeous humanist
sans font. As with CartoGothic STD, you can see the Myriad Pro influence. In
particular, I adore the light weight of this font and it will easily add a
sense of class and professionalism to any print design. More work is required
before it’s ready for display use, I feel, but the font version is only up to
0.601 and is still in development, so there’s plenty of scope for improvement.
Vegur
is free for non- and commercial use.
Serif
Header Fonts
IM
Fell Great Primer
Showcase
of IM Fell Great Primer
Moving
into the territory of serif typefaces, we chance upon an unusual yet totally
awesome font project. The
Fell Types is the work of Igino Marini, who seeks to digitally
modernize and revive the work of a 17th Century Oxford Bishop John Fell, who
developed the original typefaces. Marini has lovingly recreated each character
in each typeface, compiled them into various font families and provided extensive hinting
and kerning work to turn these ancient works into usable fonts. Of the ones
currently available, Great Primer is my favorite, available in regular,
authentic italic and small caps styles.
IM
Fell’s Great Primer is free for non- and commercial use provided that the
required citation is present.
Light
Sans Header Fonts
Raleway
A
showcase of the Raleway font
To
cap off this post, I leave you with a typeface completely unsuited to screen
use but brilliant for print design. Raleway is
a light, neo-grotesque-inspired sans font suitable for headers in print
design.
It
is a “display face that features both old style and lining numerals,
standard and discretionary ligatures, a pretty complete set of diacritics, as
well as a stylistic alternate inspired by more geometric sans-serif typefaces
than it’s neo-grotesque inspired default character set.” It is
available only in a light style but it does it very well.
Raleway
is a free, open-source font.
To
Conclude
Well,
I hope you’ve found this post interesting and useful. A screen typeface is not
a topic touched on all that often but is a particular love of mine. Here’s
hoping that the new Ubuntu font will be awesome.
Please
feel free to share this article around. Tweet it, Facebook it, Buzz it, Digg
it, whatever. Share your love for great GUI design and for excellent
screen-ready typefaces!
www.design-by-izo.com
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