Public Sans – A strong, neutral typeface

(public-sans.digital.gov)

110 points | by mhb 1 hour ago

12 comments

  • sneela 1 hour ago
    As much as I appreciate the tiny serif for lowercase L and numeral 1 to differentiate l I and 1, I am not the biggest fan of the capital I glyph without the horizontal serifs. It's my biggest design gripe with most sans-serif fonts as it makes it FRUSTRATINGLY difficult to differentiate when looking at words by themselves.

    Is that lota or Iota? Is that iodestone or lodestone? Both real examples where I fumbled reading them -- once in front of a class :)

    This is why my favorite sans-serif typeface has been (and will always be) IBM Plex Sans [1]. It's an open font [2]. I have all my laptops and desktops set to using the IBM Plex typefaces, including browser overrides. If only there were a way to do it system-wide on my Android phone...

    [1]: https://www.ibm.com/plex/

    [2]: https://github.com/IBM/plex/blob/master/LICENSE.txt

    Preview: https://fonts.google.com/specimen/IBM+Plex+Sans?preview.text...

    • smarx007 48 minutes ago
      IBM Plex is very good. Recently, I have been enjoying https://rsms.me/inter/ for interfaces a bit more (with ss02 for body and ss02+tnum for tables activated).
      • homebrewer 42 minutes ago
        Inter is the only libre typeface that has good coverage, and produces readable small text on terrible 80 DPI displays. I've tested probably hundreds of them.
      • sneela 44 minutes ago
        Ah, it initially appeared that the capital I and the lowercase L have identical-looking glyphs. But scrolling down, I see the ss02 and tnum features add noticeable glyphs. Looks like a nice typeface.
      • sdoering 10 minutes ago
        Nice. Inter even has "U+1E9E" "Latin Capital Letter Sharp S" and two lower case sharp s variants as well.
      • 101008 23 minutes ago
        Inter or linter?
        • sdoering 18 minutes ago
          Feature ss02 Disambiguation (one of many)

          Alternate glyph set that increases visual difference between similar-looking characters.

      • ramoz 45 minutes ago
        Inter has also become my default.
    • jstummbillig 45 minutes ago
      Shoutout to Atkinson Hyperlegible Next, designed for the Braille Institut having excellent glyph differentiation ("Next" with variable weight)

      https://fonts.google.com/specimen/Atkinson+Hyperlegible+Next

    • cratermoon 21 minutes ago
      My full list of ambiguous letters, from https://gajus.com/blog/avoiding-visually-ambiguous-character...

      - O / 0 - I / l / 1 / 7 - 5 / S - 2 / Z - 8 / B - 6 / G - 9 / q / g

  • ronbenton 29 minutes ago
    anything on digital.gov is at best on life support given 18F was disbanded and much of the government digital service efforts have been neglected
    • karel-3d 2 minutes ago
      The fonts are open and on github
    • tootie 9 minutes ago
      The Secretary of State recently decreed that sans serif fonts were woke and mandated all communications use Times New Roman.
  • layer8 9 minutes ago
    What does "strong" mean here? Doesn't it contradict "neutral"?

    Anyway, the "c" and "e" are closing in too much.

  • HelloUsername 41 minutes ago
  • skibidithink 1 hour ago
    Are there any designers here who can explain when the differences between Public Sans and Roboto Sans and when to use one or the other?
  • tolerance 35 minutes ago
    I want to like it but I feel like it neuters everything I like about Franklin Gothic/Libre Franklin.

    For some reason I always thought that Plus Jakarta Sans was forked from on Public Sans.

    <https://tokotype.github.io/plusjakarta-sans/>

    Which for some other reason always makes me think of the book The Jakarta Method:

    <https://www.librarything.com/work/24301785/t/The-Jakarta-Met...>

  • OhMeadhbh 1 hour ago
    Isn't this from the people who hate Calibri?
    • 1f60c 1 hour ago
      No, looks like it was started late in Obama's second term. As for the current guys, they would probably use Instrument Serif for body text if they could.
      • drivers99 12 minutes ago
        Went down a short rabbit hole from this comment and they actually are using a condensed serif font like that on www.whitehouse.gov titles at the moment.
    • hlieberman 1 hour ago
      No, this was a project by 18F and the U.S. Web Design group that debued several years back.
    • GaryBluto 1 hour ago
      This predates the Calibri-Times debacle by quite a few years.
    • Mountain_Skies 32 minutes ago
      That's just the State Department. The federal government is a huge amalgamation of agencies, each with its own set of goals, responsibilities, and quirks. Even down at the local level, I've had a hard time getting the county and the city to agree on who owns the storm drain where the neighborhood connects to the highway.
  • GaryBluto 1 hour ago
    I must say it's very pleasant. Much better than a lot of the fonts I see on the web these days.
  • joallard 1 hour ago
    Weirdly, it reminds me of Aptos, the new default font in Microsoft products.
    • maxloh 56 minutes ago
      To clarify, it is the default font for office documents, not the default UI font.
  • amelius 53 minutes ago
    I must say I like Libre Franklin (which they compare it to in the github repo) better, especially the rounded vertices.
  • gorfian_robot 49 minutes ago
    I thought the orange turd said it was Times New Roman or die?
    • treetalker 25 minutes ago
      It was Marco Rubio, and his ukase was limited to Department of State documents.

      We can, at least, thank our stars that Rubio doesn't presume to lord over the entire government as his master presumes to lord over everything else.