Riccardo Mori

That’s not Helvetica

June 3, 2014

Briefly

Osx design font

(Update, June 5: make sure you read this carefully, especially the Addendum.)

I’m still digesting the incredible amount of new things Apple introduced during yesterday’s WWDC 2014 keynote. I like a lot of what I saw, mind you, but I was disappointed by Apple’s decision to use Helvetica Neue as system font in OS X Yosemite. Despite Apple’s claims that now OS X is going to sport a ‘more elegant’ typeface system-wide, I maintain that Helvetica Neue is a poor choice, because, above all, it doesn’t have a great legibility at smaller sizes. (If you want a more informed opinion, here’s a brief post by Erik Spiekermann from two years ago.)

However something caught my eye while perusing the pictures of OS X Yosemite on Apple’s site. Go to the Design page and scroll down to the section titled Enjoy the view in all your favourite apps. You can flip through various screenshots featuring different system apps. Among these images, there’s this one of the Finder:

Yosemite Finder

I took a closer look at the menubar:

Osx design view finder nh

And I noticed that, while the ‘Finder’ menu is definitely Helvetica, the other menu items (File, Edit, View, Go, Window, Help) are not set in Helvetica. It looks more like a refined version of Lucida Grande. Compare the image above with the other Finder screenshot at the beginning, and you’ll see it’s not the same font (just look at the G in ‘Go’):

Osx design view finder comparison

Now, I don’t want to read too much into this: the Finder screenshot with the different font is the only instance it appears on Apple’s site. It may simply be an image that was prepared before or taken at an earlier development stage of OS X. It may very well be just a little oversight. Still, a part of me hopes that this is the Apple Sans typeface the company is designing in-house for future use. To me it looks way better than Helvetica.

Addendum

Judging by other people’s suggestions and reactions to this post, there has been a bit of a misunderstanding here. I’m not saying that the system font in OS X Yosemite isn’t Helvetica. It’s indeed a custom Helvetica variant made by Apple to make it more readable (I’ve been told over on App.net that Yosemite also dynamically tweaks kerning and spacing).

What I’m saying that’s not Helvetica is the font I’ve spotted in one of the OS X Yosemite screenshots Apple has featured on the OS X Yosemite preview Design page. (See again above.)

In other words:

Osx design view finder comparison ann

Both those Finder menubars come from OS X Yosemite screenshots on Apple’s site, but show two different fonts. I’m curious about the one that doesn’t look like the ‘custom Helvetica’ that appears in all the other screenshots. That font which is not Helvetica. I hope this clear things up a bit more as to what I mean.

Helvetica Neue as system font is a bad idea

May 31, 2014

by Riccardo Mori

Software

Nick Heer, in the Mac OS X 10.10 section of his Spitballing WWDC 2014:

But, if the rumours are to be believed, OS X is about to receive a major overhaul. According to Mark Gurman of 9to5Mac, OS X 10.10 will be the star of the conference, with changes such as…

… similar toggle designs to iOS 7, sharper window corners, more defined icons across the system, and more white space than the current version.

Meanwhile, Craig Hockenberry is convinced that the system UI font will be changed to Helvetica Neue from the current Lucida Grande. In fact, the Iconfactory is, in general, trying to get ahead of the curve on 10.10.

I’ve been hearing about the change from Lucida Grande to Helvetica Neue for a while now, and my initial reaction hasn’t changed — I believe Helvetica Neue to be a terrible choice for a system font. On iOS it’s tolerable because you keep your device closer to your eyes than a Mac when you interact with it. On a Mac, I honestly fear Helvetica Neue is going to be a bit of a legibility nightmare.

Let me get a few things out of my system (no pun intended):

There is absolutely nothing wrong with Lucida Grande. It is a solid font, very good for display, with great legibility at the various different sizes needed for all UI places and elements.
Moving away from Lucida Grande only because ‘it feels old’ is a silly excuse. Especially when the supposed replacement is not an improvement, at all.
Choosing Helvetica Neue because it’s the system font on iOS and visually amalgamating Apple’s operating systems is nice, is another silly thing. Why not use VAG Rounded then, since it’s the font in use on Apple’s keyboards? Or why not use Myriad Pro, since it’s Apple’s corporate font? Because the best way to implement a font is considering the context. The user interface of a smartphone or a tablet is different from the user interface of a desktop or laptop computer. This should be Human Interface Guidelines 101.

My humble proposal

If I were tasked with coming up with an alternative to Lucida Grande to be used in Mac OS X, my font of choice would be Process Type Foundry’s Seravek:

I find Seravek to be an incredibly versatile font for the screen, and quite legible even at 8–9 pt. It’s my preferred reading font on iBooks, and the only font I feel comfortable keeping at small sizes despite my not-great eyesight:

To further illustrate my point, I’ve taken three samples of UI elements in OS X Mavericks, and done a quick retouching job in Acorn to show how they would look when Helvetica Neue is used instead of Lucida Grande. I’ve tried to maintain the same font size and spacing. I think there’s no need to use abstruse typographic jargon to explain why Helvetica Neue doesn’t work very well as system font:

I chose to capture Reeder 2 for Mac’s menubar because it has more items than the Finder’s and features longer words like ‘Accounts’ and ‘Subscriptions’. 1) is the current system font Lucida Grande, 2) is Helvetica Neue, and 3) is Seravek. I still like Lucida Grande best, and you can see the similarities between Seravek and Lucida Grande (although I very much prefer Seravek’s lowercase L). You can also see what’s wrong with Helvetica Neue: there are clusters of letters that end up looking too compressed, for starters. Look at ile in ‘File’, it in ‘Edit’, ie in ‘View’. The lowercase E, having a perfectly round form, looks like the letter theta of the Greek alphabet (ϴ).

But the font size in application menus is one of the biggest across the system. Let’s look at a portion of the Finder’s sidebar:

Sidebar

Look at how better spaced both Lucida Grande and Seravek are at this size. In Lucida Grande and Seravek, thin letters like ‘l’ and ‘i’ are given more room to breathe, and that alone allows for an overall better legibility. Helvetica Neue has too regular shapes and too tight spaces between letters, creating a compressed look that feels even more compressed and more difficult to read as font sizes get smaller.

Here I’ve captured a portion of the Account panel in Mail.app Preferences, and I’ve added the same labels in Helvetica Neue near the originals in Lucida Grande. Here the system font gets even smaller than in the previous example, reaching 10–11 pt. Maybe those of you with a better eyesight than mine or with Macs equipped with a Retina display won’t mind Helvetica Neue at this size. To me, it’s borderline unbearable. I mean, I can read what it says, but I feel an increased strain that is simply absent when reading Lucida Grande. Look how terribly compressed — and visually awful — that (iCloud) in parentheses is. Same for Outgoing Mail or the tifi in ‘Certificate’.

I could go on and on, but you get the idea.

I know this UI exercise may not prove much, because we’ll have to see how the whole OS X’s user interface changes. Perhaps there are going to be a lot of other visual changes that make Helvetica Neue look better. I know that eventually there are going to be more Mac models with Retina displays, therefore making the system font look even crisper. Still, I maintain that even under those new conditions, there are so many other fonts that could be better choices for a system font rather than Helvetica Neue.

System fonts are one of the key elements in an operating system’s interface. We look at them all the time. In my opinion, such fonts have to be, above all, legible and utilitarian rather than stylish or satisfying other criteria that have little to do with usability. As I said, possible reasons like ‘bringing together the look of OS X and iOS’ or ‘Lucida Grande feels old’ or ‘Don’t worry, Helvetica Neue is going to look great on Retina displays’ are simply not enough to justify such a key change in the Mac’s operating system.

Anyway, let’s see what happens on Monday at the WWDC. I just hope my fears will turn out to be unfounded.

Update, June 3 — Well, unfortunately Apple has decided to follow the Helvetica route. At least I’m not alone in thinking that’s not a great choice: read Tobias Frere-Jones’s contribution, Why Apple’s New Font Won’t Work On Your Desktop.

Vantage Point magazine

May 28, 2014

by Riccardo Mori

Et Cetera

I’m finally, officially launching my new project, Vantage Point magazine, a compact digital publication available on Apple’s Newsstand platform and produced by the great folks at Type Engine.

Why this magazine

As you’ll read in the introduction on Issue 0 of Vantage Point (the free demo issue you get when you download the app), I wanted to create a sort of Supplement for this website. A publication that could offer new materials related to the subjects I usually talk about here on Morrick.me, and also be an extension of Morrick.me by providing articles about other topics I’m interested in but rarely mention here. I want this website to stay focussed on a few selected categories and subjects, and things like book reviews, music reviews, non-tech opinion pieces, articles about movies or television series, etc., would be a bit out of place on Morrick.me. But not on a dedicated, compact digital Supplement like Vantage Point.

At the same time, I’d love to offer some degree of unpredictability, so that readers might wonder: what’s Rick going to talk about on this issue? I think it’s a good way to keep things interesting. I’m naturally curious, and Vantage Point is aimed at an audience of curious people.

Periodicity, structure, pricing

A new issue of Vantage Point will be available approximately every two weeks, and will include 4–5 articles. Two recurring elements in every issue will be:

An introductory Aperitif, something to stimulate the reader’s appetite. It might be a series of images, a thought, a quote, some brief observations or excerpts found on the Web or in my archives.
An episode of Low Fidelity, a novel I’m going to publish in serialised form (more information is available at the Crosslines//Low Fidelity website and I’ve talked about the project in more detail in this article). It is, I believe, the perfect chance to finally formalise a project I started in 1995 and subsequently left in a bit of a semi-abandoned state.

Since it’s available on Apple’s Newsstand platform, you’ll be able to read Vantage Point on any iOS device, both in portrait and landscape orientation. Together with the Type Engine staff, I did my best to offer a decent experience even on iPhones with a 3.5″ screen in portrait orientation, though text will certainly look better in landscape mode.

Subscriptions will cost $2.99 / €2.69 a month, which means each issue is going to cost you about $1.50 / €1.35, which seems a fair enough price to me.

Type Engine

This magazine wouldn’t exist without the tools and the assistance of Type Engine. Check their site to have an idea of the great service these people provide. I want to thank, in particular, Type Engine founders Jamie Smyth and Daniel Genser who have been extremely encouraging from the start and have helped me a lot in every way; Ben Moodie, who took care of the magazine’s template; David Tyner, Kelly Shaw and Debbie Lopes, who were always there to provide assistance at every step of the process. I also wanted to thank Alicia Kan for being a great motivator, especially in the early days of the project. And another thing worth mentioning: App.net played an important role in all this — without App.net, everything that led to the creation of Vantage Point wouldn’t have happened.

Final note

I really hope you’ll like Vantage Point and that you’ll want to support my writing by becoming subscribers and helping me spread the word. Thoughtful feedback is very welcome. You can reach me on Twitter and App.net as usual (I’m @morrick on both networks) or you can write an email at vp(@)morrick.me. I have also created an official Tumblr account for Vantage Point that I’ll use to list the contents of every issue and for all communications strictly related to the magazine itself.

As always, thank you for reading.

Update, 29 May 2014 — Users are reporting a few small problems with the app. I did my best to spot bugs and problems before launching the magazine but still something has managed to escape my (and Type Engine’s) attention. I’m adding all reported problems to this post on the Vantage Point official Tumblr account. I want to thank all the people who contacted me so far for their positive feedback and for making me aware of the issues. Hopefully all current problems will be fixed with the next update. Thank you all for your patience and understanding.

Update, November 2016 — As of end of November 2016, Vantage Point magazine has ceased publications. Thanks to everyone who subscribed and supported this project during the two years of its run!

Just because it’s with you doesn’t make it the best

May 27, 2014

by Riccardo Mori

Tech Life

Canon AE‑1

Inspired by The Best Camera, a recent article by Ben Brooks, I wanted to share a few observations about that same mantra which seemingly annoys both Ben and me — the best camera is the one you have with you.

You can read those words in many ways. To me, they always sounded a bit like It’s okay to consider a smartphone your best camera, which is fine, I guess, considering the greatly improved camera capabilities of some high-profile smartphones today. Related: your smartphone is your best camera because it’s always with you and allows you to capture moments you couldn’t have captured otherwise. However, whether what you have with you is your smartphone or a full-blown camera, the fact that it’s there when you need to capture something doesn’t necessarily mean it’s the ‘best’ at doing so.

I own many different film cameras, and a couple of Nikon Coolpix digital cameras — the 8800 (8 megapixels) and the compact 7600 (7.1 megapixels) — which are about ten years old. I always have my iPhone 4 with me, which takes decent photos, and I often bring along a film camera. My little collection features all kind of 35mm film cameras: SLRs, rangefinders, simple fixed-focus point-and-shoot cameras, all ranging from the cumbersome (but still amazing) Canon T90 SLR to the pocketable Olympus XA2, Olympus Pen EE2, Agfa Optima Sensor and Canon Demi.

When you own more than 25 vintage cameras, all in working condition, you tend to do some planning when you go out. Ninety percent of the time, I have both my iPhone and a compact film camera with me. When I’m simply going for a walk (as opposed to going out on errands or to work off-site), I typically bring more versatile camera gear with me: an SLR, a 50mm normal lens and a zoom lens. Despite all these options and a bit of planning before going out, there are times when I still end up leaving the ‘best’ camera at home.

Ben Brooks writes:

I hate the mantra that the best camera is the one with you, but in hindsight it does seem to hold true — well, kind of. You see in hindsight, and even now, we don’t really know what images we are missing, or missed. I don’t know what other images I could have had on that hike if I had tripods, lenses, dSLRs, ND filters, and patience. I don’t know, and I don’t care to try and think back on it.

For me, the best camera is that which is most suitable for the situation I’m in, and there are times when I know what images I’m missing, and for a photo enthusiast as myself, that’s just infuriating. That conversation between two old ladies on a fourth-floor balcony at sunset would have been a terrific capture had I had my Canon SLR with the great 35–105mm f3.5 zoom lens, which is a great performer in low light. Instead I was carrying my iPhone and a Canonet GIII QL-17 rangefinder with me (which has a fixed 40mm f1.7 lens), and all I could capture was a shot of the front of the building where you can see two people hanging out on the fourth floor. Still a decent photo, but not the result I was looking for.

Conversely, sometimes I stumble on great street scenes, but my large and heavy Canon T90 SLR with the equally heavy Vivitar Series 1 – 28–90mm 1:2.8–3.5 zoom lens is hardly the best gear to capture people discreetly. My iPhone 4 is a decent enough fallback, but every now and then the hardware is a bit too slow to capture a scene anyway.

These are just two quick examples that I hope help illustrate my point. Mind you, I’m often satisfied with the photographic results I get at the end of the day, and I still find myself in situations where I’m really glad I have at least my iPhone with me. But other times my gaze locks on a certain scene or detail I would love to capture properly, yet I have to ‘let it go’ because I just don’t have the right gear with me. Yes, I’d rather not take a picture than accept the tradeoff of shooting something anyway with the wrong tool and hope I can adjust it and push it a bit towards the original vision in the post-processing stage. This will probably sound like nitpicking to most casual digital photographers (for whom the words The best camera is the one you have with you will also probably ring quite true most of the time), but it’s the way I approach photography.

You can certainly make the most of what you have with you, but it won’t always be the best camera or the best results you can achieve. It’s all a matter of expectations in the end, I think.

From the lost drawer: Italian calligraphy book from the 1900s

May 23, 2014

by Riccardo Mori

Et Cetera

Dating the book

The book is approximately 13.5 cm tall and 28.5 cm wide, and consists of 40 plates plus an illustrated inside cover. There is no explicit printing date, but the publisher — Carlo Barbini Editore — was active between 1860 and 1918. According to this book, which lists all the publishers based in Milan, Italy, that were in business between 1900 and 1945, Carlo Barbini Editore added the book trade to its publishing activities in 1868.

Inside cover

As you can see in the bottom center of the inside cover, the publisher is listed as “Carlo Barbini Librajo Editore”. Libraio (here written in the spelling of the time) means bookseller in Italian. Therefore this book must have been printed after 1868. Since it clearly belonged to my great-grandfather (it has his signature on it) and he was born in the early 1890s, the book was probably used when he was a student during the 1900s (calligraphy was taught in high school back then). It’s hard to say when exactly it was printed — it could have very well been any year between 1868 and 1918 — but I venture a guess that it may have been printed in the 1900s at the latest. The 1910s is too late a period for my great-grandfather to have used it in school (he fought in World War I).

Structure of the book

The book consists of 40 plates. It begins with a few plates (№ 1 to 10) outlining the way to draw letters. Then it offers examples of alphabets and words in various styles (round, italic, English script, Gothic script) (plates № 12 to 19). Then there are a few plates with different typographic examples (№ 20 to 22, then № 29 to 34). Plates № 23 to 28 offer a fair amount of beautifully ornate monograms, while plates № 35 to 39 are examples of headings to use in letterheads.

Condition of the book

Considering that this book is at least 100 years old, I’d say things could be worse. The paper used is rather thick and coarse, and it certainly helped the book survive all these years. Unfortunately it was mishandled and abused, probably when it was passed to my grandfather and his brother when they were kids. They treated it as a colouring book and there are a lot of scribblings on many of the pages. Some I was able to erase because thankfully they were done with pencils, but there are pages showing markings made with coloured pencils, crayons and even dip pens. For these, I did my best at cleaning up the scans using the stamp tool in Graphic Converter. Sadly, there are also a few pages missing (ripped or cut off).

Cleaning up

All the scans presented here are of the pages and plates I could scan and restore. If a plate is missing, it’s because either the page itself was missing or the page was so badly damaged/abused it wasn’t worth presenting. I managed to clean up a few plates where the abuse was light. I proceeded with caution and I decided to limit the cleaning process to a minimum to avoid results that would have looked too artificial for a 100-year-old book. My aim was to make letters and glyphs more legible, nothing more. Here are a few before-and-after examples of the work I did:

Cleaning up

The scans

And here are all the scans. I have made available a Dropbox folder containing the high-resolution images (filenames ending with ‘c’ — e.g. tav03c.jpg — indicate that the plate has been retouched and cleaned).

Enjoy.

Plate 1
Plate 1