[HN Gopher] Reddit Sans
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       Reddit Sans
        
       Author : platzhirsch
       Score  : 57 points
       Date   : 2023-11-29 19:22 UTC (3 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (github.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (github.com)
        
       | MR4D wrote:
       | This is a really clean font. Nice work!
        
         | Wistar wrote:
         | It is a handsome typeface.
        
         | nullindividual wrote:
         | It's terrible.
         | 
         | L != I
        
       | jeffcox wrote:
       | I guess with less users and moderators they have more time to
       | explore their hobbies over at reddit now.
        
         | mjr00 wrote:
         | Reddit has always had a ton of stupid irrelevant side projects.
         | Remember "creddits"/ReddCoin, the "social cryptocurrency" they
         | were developing? Hard to believe that was a decade ago. Harder
         | to believe that in retrospect, they should have just done it,
         | been ready when the crypto hype wave came and exited/IPO'd as
         | billionaires.
        
           | nicbou wrote:
           | On the other hand, that big pixel board thing they do once a
           | year is a great idea. Some of these other things also led to
           | fun community behaviours.
        
             | progval wrote:
             | Not once a year, it was supposed to be a one off in 2017,
             | and they did it again in 2022 and 2023.
        
               | kmeisthax wrote:
               | The 2023 one in particular came right after /u/Spez
               | started cracking mod heads, and was full of "fuck spez"
               | right up until the end.
        
         | MrMorden wrote:
         | Fewer. </davos>
        
       | swader999 wrote:
       | I've been sans Reddit for a couple of years now and it's been
       | very low stress.
        
         | dingnuts wrote:
         | HN is just a glorified subreddit run under a different domain
         | name lol
        
           | dakial1 wrote:
           | I fear that with popularity HN will become the horrible place
           | that reddit is today....
        
       | p1mrx wrote:
       | More like _Sans Reddit_ , har har am I right?
       | 
       | Discompliments to /u/spez.
        
         | fsckboy wrote:
         | s/\/u\/spez\\./\/user\/spez ./
        
           | pxeger1 wrote:
           | s%/u/spez.%/user/spez .%
        
       | micromacrofoot wrote:
       | any explanation of why they embarked on a custom font? it's not
       | such a simple task and most people wouldn't really appreciate the
       | difference if they used arial for everything
        
         | supperrtadderr wrote:
         | Someone wanted to make work for themself.
         | 
         | Or justify themself being present at their "job". :)
        
         | nullindividual wrote:
         | To me, it looks like creating a font isn't terribly difficult
         | based on https://kokorobot.ca/site/making_a_font.html.
         | 
         | That said, I'm a no-talent hack and I'm sure any font I created
         | would look like I ate and subsequently vomited off-brand
         | crayons onto the screen.
        
       | agluszak wrote:
       | I don't really understand why every brand nowadays wants to have
       | a custom font
        
         | Eumenes wrote:
         | Hipster design teams. Typography lets them be "artists",
         | returning to bohemian roots. In reality, they're just designing
         | apps around dark patterns or whatever the product management
         | team thinks is righteous. Companies can't say no, they're in
         | demand, so its really a "20% project".
        
           | gsk22 wrote:
           | Is typography not an art? So how then are they not artists?
        
         | giraffe_lady wrote:
         | I'm curious about it too, I'd love to read something by someone
         | with more specific insight than I have.
         | 
         | I know that people _love_ to make fonts: it 's a really common
         | hobby activity and people make incredible fonts all the time
         | just for the hell of it. I don't really know how that
         | translates so commonly into the institutional will to do it
         | that every company seems to have. I can kinda guess but it's
         | just conjecture.
        
         | patternMachine wrote:
         | It's cheaper. Many fonts require ongoing licensing fees based
         | on views or some other metric. Creating your own font means you
         | own it -- no more fees.
        
           | sonicanatidae wrote:
           | And this sucks because Calibri is an awesome font. ;)
        
         | brianfryer wrote:
         | Licensing costs. It's cheaper to design your own typeface than
         | to license others when a platform reaches a large scale.
        
         | adamrezich wrote:
         | I didn't either, until I tried typing a capital F, followed by
         | a period, followed by a (regular, non-curly) quotation mark, on
         | Twitter, and saw how it condensed it down far too much into an
         | ugly mess--"oh, designers just have too much time on their
         | hands."
        
         | bamazizi wrote:
         | Part of it has to do with licensing costs but also "brand-able"
         | ownership.
         | 
         | Say if you use Arial or Helvetica for your logo, then it's a
         | generic typeface easily reproduced by whoever else that has
         | them installed on their computer. So often, many brands for
         | their logo take a generic font and customize it to make it
         | their own. However, when you customize a font for a logo the
         | font file itself is not customized, just the vector version of
         | it for the character of the brand name. So if you want to
         | extend the usage of the font style to say headline text or
         | advertising text, then you need a whole custom built font.
         | Custom fonts cost money, but picking a pre-existing "designed"
         | typeface from other type foundries cost a lot more than getting
         | a custom font. So two birds with one stone, you get a unique
         | font for your brand and don't pay additional licensing since
         | you own it.
        
       | ChrisArchitect wrote:
       | Blog post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38465233
       | 
       | Specimen site: https://redditsans.s-ings.com/
        
         | wffurr wrote:
         | >> Yes, Snoo (and our brand colors and typography) is getting a
         | makeover to help better reflect how our growing user base uses
         | Reddit. These changes will help redditors worldwide continue
         | engaging in conversations with each other.
         | 
         | And yet they're not addressing how non-redditors engage with
         | content on their site. Any day you want to stop nagging about
         | the app or just show me all the dang comments would be great.
         | In the meantime, there's always teddit.
        
         | nailer wrote:
         | Snoo looks like he has a beard now:
         | 
         | https://www.redditinc.com/assets/images/site/_1440xAUTO_crop...
        
           | nullindividual wrote:
           | Looks like snoo is working through the night but hasn't
           | stopped hitting the whisky bottle prepping for that IPO.
        
           | quitit wrote:
           | They've lost track of why the old logo resonated.
        
             | meepmorp wrote:
             | I'm not sure management ever understood what resonated
             | about any part of reddit.
        
       | munchler wrote:
       | I see Reddit has entered its "rearranging the deck chairs on the
       | Titanic" phase.
        
         | firebot wrote:
         | It's a sinking shit show.
        
       | bsimpson wrote:
       | I'm surprised to see a new brand font in nearly-2024 that doesn't
       | have variable axes.*
       | 
       | * https://fonts.google.com/knowledge/introducing_type/introduc...
        
         | mike_d wrote:
         | The font is almost 4 years old at this point.
        
           | crazygringo wrote:
           | According to the blog post it's new today:
           | 
           | https://www.redditinc.com/blog/evolving-the-reddit-brand-
           | a-m...
           | 
           | "We're introducing new bespoke typefaces, Reddit Display, and
           | Reddit Sans."
        
       | firebot wrote:
       | Those are such beautiful glyphs.
        
       | StevePerkins wrote:
       | What an interesting thread to read. "Typography aficionados" are
       | one of the most ardent and vocal subcultures within the Hacker
       | News community. Any given post may be hijacked at any time, for a
       | meta-discussion about the font choices on that post's linked web
       | page.
       | 
       | When a post actually IS about a new font, people dissect that
       | latest microscopic riff on Helvetica like whiskey snobs
       | describing a spirit's nose and mouthfeel.
       | 
       | However, a strong cross-cutting theme on HN is "hating Reddit
       | even though you obviously spend a lot of time there". It's a
       | clash of the titans, and a real role-reversal... this may be the
       | first time I've ever seen a post _about_ fonts mostly hijacked by
       | something else instead.
        
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       (page generated 2023-11-29 23:02 UTC)