[HN Gopher] GitHub is releasing two open-source fonts: Mona and ...
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       GitHub is releasing two open-source fonts: Mona and Hubot Sans
        
       Author : stanislavb
       Score  : 48 points
       Date   : 2022-11-10 21:28 UTC (1 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (github.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (github.com)
        
       | LarsDu88 wrote:
       | - Time spent on making font: 3 hours - Time spent on making
       | website with cute CG robots to promote font: 5 months, $700,000
       | in graphic design and engineering labor
        
       | jagger27 wrote:
       | All I'm asking for is a drop in replacement for Univers with good
       | licensing.
        
       | [deleted]
        
       | IshKebab wrote:
       | Wow that lowercase y is quite something.
        
       | hardwaresofton wrote:
       | > Licensed under OFL (basically, use it on your site or in your
       | app and credit GitHub--read the full license)
       | 
       | Is this common for F/OSS fonts? I don't know that I've seen many
       | fonts that require attribution.
       | 
       | TIL any the OFL
       | (https://scripts.sil.org/cms/scripts/page.php?site_id=nrsi&id...)
        
       | rcarr wrote:
       | I've observed a lot of sport brands have been using similar
       | fonts.
       | 
       | Examples:
       | 
       | - https://uk.formswim.com
       | 
       | - https://www.nike.com
       | 
       | - https://www.reebok.co.uk
        
       | slbtty wrote:
       | I don't understand why they invest(or buy?) fonts?
        
         | slater wrote:
         | To save money on licensing existing fonts. Own the font, do
         | what you want with it, independent of whatever license changes
         | a third-party might impose years down the line.
        
         | barkingcat wrote:
         | Perhaps I'm misreading your question, are you asking why they
         | invest in fonts?
         | 
         | If so, the answer is that fonts are a major underpinning of how
         | an organization or a product is presented to the world.
         | 
         | To make an analogy that the hn crowd might understand, the
         | value of a typeface for a design system is like the value a
         | cryptographic primitive or a library like openssl to a
         | functioning security system.
         | 
         | Nobody (aside from designers and typographers) will think "oh
         | wow that font is so great they must have invested a lot into
         | it", but it underlies every written visual interaction between
         | the brand/product/company and its audience.
         | 
         | That said, are there many other fonts available that fall into
         | the appropriate style, usage, licensing terms, etc that GitHub
         | need? Perhaps. But uniqueness is a value in itself, and having
         | a decision about a set of fonts that the company uses is a
         | pretty important thing.
         | 
         | It's like the 3 spaces or 4 spaces vs tabs discussion. Some
         | people use one, other people use another. But in a company,
         | having an approved typeface that is recognized internally as
         | the typeface to use (of course, you can have different
         | typefaces for different scenarios/uses) - is just as important
         | as determining which one to use.
        
           | kjkjadksj wrote:
           | Standards make sense but it how many san serif fonts do we
           | really need as a species? It was someone's job here to set
           | out and reinvent the wheel, and that seems like a waste of
           | effort to me.
        
           | dandellion wrote:
           | Fine, but are there any good reasons to spend resources on
           | fonts?
           | 
           | Maybe if they spent less resources on achievements, fonts,
           | etc. and more on reliability they could improve their
           | downtime, which seems to be happening more and more often.
        
             | a_t48 wrote:
             | Does money/time spent by designers/front end take away from
             | that towards back end?
        
       | _s wrote:
       | Just a quick note - the "body" text on the page uses Alliance,
       | also designed by the same studio I think
       | (https://degarism.com/Alliance). The two fonts themselves are
       | catered more towards headers / titles.
        
       | pokstad wrote:
       | Funny, didn't GitHub start the trend of using system fonts on
       | their site? That was such a refreshing change.
        
       | samueloph wrote:
       | Wow, two brand new fonts in 2022 and they still make lowercase
       | "l" look exactly like uppercase "i", I thought we were past that
       | by now :(
        
         | JaggedJax wrote:
         | Worse than look exactly alike, they are exactly the same. Pixel
         | for pixel when I compare the examples on the site. Sigh.
        
           | bombcar wrote:
           | At least they both don't look like the 1.
           | 
           | Someone's gonna lose a LOT of crypto over this.
        
         | O_H_E wrote:
         | lmao, they are actually identical.
        
         | vouaobrasil wrote:
         | Good point. I like the look of these fonts but upon noticing
         | your point I decided I won't use them.
        
           | a_t48 wrote:
           | l had to Iook very carefully to make sure you hadn't
           | substituted the two Ietters. :)
        
         | [deleted]
        
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       (page generated 2022-11-10 23:01 UTC)