When Apple launched the Watch, it also designed a new system font to go with it: San Francisco. The typeface was specifically designed to combine a clean look with readability on the small display of the Apple Watch.
We exclusively revealed last week that Apple doesn’t intend to limit San Francisco to the watch: it instead plans to adopt the new typeface for Macs, iPhones and iPads. San Francisco is expected to replace Helvetica Neue as part of iOS 9 and OS X 10.11. Designer Wenting Zhang features the font in a look at “the beautiful details of the type forms that often get overlooked†…Â
The Type Detail project is aimed at typography fans, so you won’t find explanations of the technical terms use in the visual analysis, but it does reveal a few of the details that make San Francisco easy to read even in very small sizes.
One of the keys to readability is what is described as the large x-height: lower-case letters are around 75% of the height of capitals, making lower-case letters larger than in a typical font. The ‘eye’ of letters like e and a â€" the gap between the tail and the rest of the letter â€" are also larger than usual.
The site shows what the typeface looks like in a range of sizes, weights and styles, and says that it is similar to Open Sans and Arial.
Don’t expect too many new features in either iOS 9 or OS X 10.11: multiple sources tell our Mark Gurman that both updates will focus more on quality and stability than headline features. If you don’t want to wait for OS X 10.11, you can download a modified version of the font now and install it as your system font in Yosemite.
Via TNW
Reading Roundup: Everything to know (so far) about iOS 9 and OS XÂ 10.11
iOS 9 OS X 10.11 to bring ‘quality’ focus, smaller apps, Rootless security, legacy iPhone/iPad support
The only real question is: what took them so long to give this beautiful font the recognition it so richly deserves?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Francisco_(1984_typeface)