

Roboto vs Helvetica Neue: Can you distinguish the new Android typeface? - jtauber
http://typewar.com/quests/quest/12/

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sp332
I don't get it. Aside from the block capitals, they are pretty
distinguishable. Roboto's verticals are generally thicker. The round letters
are taller and less round. Roboto has a bit of a curve on the long lines, for
example at the bottom of the W. Helvetica's straight lines are actually
straight. Roboto has trapezoidal stems on qrpgdb, and the curved lines on
those letters get a lot thinner near the vertical. The k has a horizontal bar.
The ascenders on lowercase letters are taller than capital letters, but
Helvetica keeps them the same height.

Edit: of course this doesn't even account for kerning, punctuation, etc.

~~~
Steko
Looks like a ripoff to me:

[http://theunderstatement.com/post/11645166791/roboto-vs-
helv...](http://theunderstatement.com/post/11645166791/roboto-vs-helvetica)

~~~
ajross
I see two sans serif fonts in the same broad style and line width. It's not
clear if the identical metrics are the defaults or an artifact of the
presentation there (though "stealing" font metrics for the purpose of layout
unification has a history much longer than the tech industry's). And Helvetica
Neue is hardly an Apple invention anyway; it's a rejiggering of an ancient
font everyone has been using and cloning for decades.

Really, what's the point here? That Roboto is another entry in the
Helvetica/Arial family of sans serif typefaces? Shocking!

Edit: If I had to find a flame in this area: I think it can be argued that if
Google really wanted to make the Roboto font into part of the Android brand,
to the extent that they market it via its own name, they should have worked
harder at making it unique. This is, indeed, a very bland tweaking of a strong
existing standard. It's not something particularly notable.

~~~
Steko
No one said it's an Apple ripoff, it's a Helvetica ripoff and not the first
(famously).

It does epitomize the difference between Apple, which just goes and writes the
check and Google, who seem intent on following Microsoft down a road of
"embrace and extend".

~~~
bradleyland
If we want to go down that road, we end up back at Akzidenz-Grotesk. Almost
all modern grotesque fonts (and certainly the popular ones) are derived from
some previous work. I still prefer Helvetica Neue, but I don't begrudge Google
for developing their own font based on Helvetica.

~~~
Steko
I don't begrudge Google for _developing their own font based on Helvetica_
either.

The point of this sub-thread is really establishing that _Google developed
their own font based on Helvetica_. A number of posters have contended that
they aren't that similar.

~~~
bradleyland
Well, good luck with the "similarity" argument when it comes to fonts. We are,
after all, talking about letter forms. Within the sans-serif family, the
degree of similarity has a lot to do with how much attention you pay to fonts
and typography in general. Keep in mind that to some people (who probably
don't care about cars) a Ford Fusion and VW Jetta look pretty similar. The
same rules apply here. Similarity is in the eye of the beholder unless you're
talking about some quantifiable metric.

------
btn
Wasn't this covered already with "Arial vs. Helvetia"?
([http://ilovetypography.com/2007/10/06/arial-versus-
helvetica...](http://ilovetypography.com/2007/10/06/arial-versus-helvetica/))

I think what's going to distinguish these fonts isn't their individual
character forms (which I do think are significantly different, perhaps even
more so than Arial and Helvetica), but their optimisations. That is, how
Roboto has been given ligatures, kerning, and hinting to make it work well on
mobile phone screens at the sizes it'll be rendered at.

(Also, the typewar quiz is a little unfair: it's hard to scrutinise character
width and it doesn't seem to include numerals---areas where there are quite
noticeable differences between the two.)

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alecbenzer
I commented here as well: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3130877>, but
does it really make sense to compare individual letters of fonts? I'd think
that a well designed font would be able to convey a different feel when
looking at large bodies of text (larger than single letters, at least) via
subtle nuances, even if individual letters look like those in a different
font.

~~~
ryandvm
Definitely. Comparing fonts letter by letter is something only a font priest
could do. Here is a paragraph comparison I found on the other Hacker News post
on the matter:

<https://minus.com/lYhmsD1xeT9ap>

~~~
sp332
Helvetica has a lot of different "weights". I wonder if they would look more
similar if you compared to a heavier weight?

Edit: here's what I mean
[https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/File:Helvetic...](https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/File:Helvetica_Neue_typeface_weights.svg)
and [http://sixrevisions.com/infographics/helvetica-font-
weights-...](http://sixrevisions.com/infographics/helvetica-font-weights-as-
rock-music-genres-infographic/)

~~~
Steko
I can totally tell the difference if you bold helvetica.

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beej71
Friends, I'm afraid the news is even worse than originally reported.
Apparently not only does Roboto copy Helvetica, but it apparently also
simultaneously copies Ascender Corp's Liberation Sans, URW++'s Nimbus Sans L,
and Microsoft's Arial! And the investigation has only begun--it is too early
to determine how many other Helvetica clones it might have copied.

------
degusta
(Disclosure: I did the understatement.com piece)

I agree with many of the points people are making (there are some differences,
there are many Helvetica/etc based fonts, etc). Really the most amusing thing
to me is that Google made a big deal out of the type change - it was the first
point in their Ice Cream Sandwich launch. Can you imagine if at Apple's iPhone
4/iOS 4 launch they said "and our first big feature is: we're dropping
Helvetica! For Helvetica Neue!"

------
Steko
Beyond the similarities there are some interesting comments from professionals
and responses by the Roboto designer here:

[http://typographica.org/2011/on-typography/roboto-
typeface-i...](http://typographica.org/2011/on-typography/roboto-typeface-is-
a-four-headed-frankenstein/)

------
Daishiman
They're clearly distinguishable on both paragraphs and individual glyphs to
me.

~~~
beej71
Don't know why you got the downvote, but learning to distinguish fonts is a
skill that many people haven't acquired. A friend of mine has a brain that
just ignores the glyphs entirely--he'd read a research paper in comic sans and
not think twice about it.

I'd think only the top 1% of font enthusiasts would be able to identify a sans
font for a single "T" or "V", but Roboto has plenty of giveaways from
Helvetica in the a, e, q, p, b, d, x, g, etc. Used in a sentence, I'd be able
to identify it over Helvetica every time.

~~~
Daishiman
I am by no means a font fanboy, but it's evident to me that Roboto's
guidelines clearly differ in the preferred dimensions and curving from
Helvetica.

Moreover, it appears (at least on my monitor) to be a much more readable font.

------
Luyt
That site is excruciatingly slow. I had to wait 20 seconds for every page!

~~~
jtauber
Sorry, we're get high load at the moment

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nknight
I have a better question: Does anyone care? Seriously? The debate has
degenerated to whether Google is ripping off Apple's choice of _font_? WTF?

~~~
sp332
This isn't about Apple. Helvetica is one of the most popular fonts, it's used
everywhere.

edited

~~~
jtauber
Actually, the point is just to play a fun typeface recognition game :-)

~~~
sp332
Haha, OK, I was thinking of this other post on the topic
<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3130822>

