
Clear Sans - hactually
https://01.org/clear-sans
======
mortenjorck
The quality of open-source typography has massively increased in just the past
few years, and it's great to see Intel making its own contribution. The number
of free options we have today for well-balanced, full, multi-weight type
families (not just "fonts") would have seemed impossible just four years ago.

Intel's entry nicely fills a void left between more humanist types like
Ascender's Open Sans and more geometric families like Natanel Gama's redrawn
Exo family. It has a nice DIN-esque rigidity to the strokes that the other big
DIN descendent, Roboto, doesn't fully embrace.

~~~
_greim_
This needs to sink into the collective brains of the world's brand designers,
many of whom still standardize upon proprietary fonts.

My company creates sites for a variety of brands, and we run into the same
problem over and over again. No, we can't hotlink your copy of Frutiger. No,
we can't host our own copy. No, we won't accept an email stating "we give you
permission to use this font" in lieu of a license from the actual foundry. No,
we're not going to embed typography in images or flash. People are often
clueless about the technical and legal difficulties of proprietary fonts on
the web.

~~~
mortenjorck
Well, that's a bit like saying "the world's software developers, many of whom
still use proprietary frameworks." Branding agencies use proprietary type
families when they're the most appropriate for the job, just like developers
use commercial software when it fits a need that the open source community
hasn't filled to their liking. Open-source typography is flourishing, but that
doesn't mean commercial typography is dead.

~~~
_greim_
> Open-source typography is flourishing, but that doesn't mean commercial
> typography is dead.

Agreed, I just think the pendulum hasn't swung far enough on the open
direction, because of the relative newness of the tech. In other words, it
seems that branding agencies sometimes use proprietary type families out of
habit and ignorance, not because they've evaluated the tradeoffs and made a
careful choice.

~~~
Silhouette
_In other words, it seems that branding agencies sometimes use proprietary
type families out of habit and ignorance, not because they 've evaluated the
tradeoffs and made a careful choice._

I think their choice is more rational than you give credit for. While there
are now quite a few good freely available fonts for use on your blog or small
business site, there are still few, if any, open font families that offer the
same breadth as good commercial offerings. If you're a large organisation,
bringing in an agency to create overall branding guidelines that will apply to
everything you produce from slideshows to printed brochures via web apps and
business cards, it would be foolish of that agency to suggest typography that
didn't offer enough range to be future-proof.

~~~
doorhammer
My (anecdotal) experience has been that given a large enough organization,
you're probably going to run into a lot of subsets of the organization that
just don't know any better or aren't aware of the company branding strategy
and guidelines. It's probably a reasonable bet to say that most of those
groups won't be creating public facing content, but I've seen it happen often
enough before. Not a broad study, but an interesting note.

Basically, just that it's useful to remember that large organizations, as much
as they'd like to be, aren't always as homogeneous and cohesive in branding
and approach as they'd like to be.

The following is also anecdotal: I work in the contact center world, and it's
pretty surprising just how isolated and disconnected some companies are when
it comes not just to brick and mortar vs e-com, but e-com and it's call
centers.

Add in more prefaces/cya's that I haven't done formal research on the subject
where necessary :)

------
ryanwhitney
Unfortunate, but not surprising, to see it incorrectly implemented across the
entire site:
[http://cl.ly/image/260h1Z302T24](http://cl.ly/image/260h1Z302T24)

If you want to use multiple font weights, you have to load and reference each
weight in your stylesheet. Otherwise, you end up with a browser-added faux-
bolding instead of the _actual_ bold font.

~~~
hndl
Can you elaborate what you mean by "load and reference each weight in your
stylesheet" for us who aren't CSS savvy?

~~~
elwell
the way most people do it is to use

    
    
      font-family: blah;
    

on every class that needs it. this is because @font-face isn't supported
completely when using simply

    
    
      font-weight: blah;
    

to differentiate between different @font-face family groups.

~~~
calinet6
If you define your weights correctly when loading your @font-faces, then
weight works as expected: [http://www.456bereastreet.com/archive/201012/font-
face_tip_d...](http://www.456bereastreet.com/archive/201012/font-
face_tip_define_font-weight_and_font-style_to_keep_your_css_simple/)

~~~
elwell
That technique is actually what I'm referring to. I've seen that not work
before; sorry don't have details. I just don't mess with that anymore and
instead use every font-family explicitly when needed.

------
bbx
Designing a font is one of the few things on my "bucket list" (designing a
Linux desktop environment being another one). But it being quite the
undertaking, I end up relying upon fonts I find while browsing the web (I keep
a list of the best-looking/most useful ones).

Typekit and Google Web Fonts really changed the state of font usage in web
design. We're not restricted anymore by a fixed amount of fonts, nor have to
rely upon images or weird technologies (remember Cufon?) to display custom
fonts. It has its drawbacks (loading time, unreadable thin characters...), but
it's overall a great step forward in software-less web design and graphical
variety (which in turn improves visual identity).

~~~
Kiro
Is your list available somewhere?

~~~
bbx
Actually no. It's only available in some corner of my brain for now... But I
recently redesigned by blog [1] and have been considering adding a "Bucket
list" section, which would only include design-related challenges, both
digital (like a complete phone OS) and physical (a car dashboard _without_
touch controls, a kitchen layout...).

Obviously, most of these problems would be hard to tackle, considering they're
usually out of my skills scope. It's just that I often think to myself "This
could be improved".

[1]: [http://jgthms.com/](http://jgthms.com/)

------
cmiller1
It doesn't say this on the website, but they are releasing this under the
Apache license.

I wish they made this more clear from the get go because with all of the
formats they are releasing it in as well as the release note on browser
compatibility, they are clearly targeting this towards web development.

~~~
cies
i was also looking for the "terms of sharing" :)

couldn't find it on the website, so ctrl-f'ed the HN comments...

~~~
cordite
Same here. Licenses really concerns me when it comes to things like this.

------
devindotcom
I'm a bit put off by the "bent-iron" quality of how the curves and straights
meet, like this is a type designed to mimic neon signs. There are some nice
touches, though. It looks great bold.

That said, having that image with the type super small and basically at the
extreme limit of legibility (I can barely read it) I don't think does you a
service. Do a nice big species with lots of common use cases! This one looks
like mush.

~~~
CamperBob2
Agreed on both counts. The 'a' looks particularly awkward.

It's 95% of a really nice font, but that last 5% makes all the difference.

~~~
Blahah
Interesting, the 'a' also caught my attention straight away, but I think it's
particularly beautiful.

~~~
jdbevan
I've started noticing different a's recently in typography since it was
pointed out to me that people with dyslexia and people with lower literacy
skills struggle with the "upright" style lowercase A (as show in this font and
a lot of other popular fonts) as opposed to the "italic" style lowercase A
that _most_ people hand write.

~~~
mzs
Why is the italic lower case A so different from bold and regular lower case A
for Clear Sans? The italic version matches better the @ used as well.

~~~
theon144
You're right, the italic a is like from a completely different typeface, wow.
I kind of like it better, and since it's under an open-source license, I might
make a version with this version as the general one.

------
ambiguator
This is basically a less humanistic version of Frutiger. As a designer I find
the entire face irksome. The legibility doesn't come close to Adrian
Frutiger's namesake.

~~~
pekk
Is a designer's taste more important than someone else's?

~~~
ambiguator
Not at all. I just wanted to point out that it looks like one of the best
typefaces of all time except without it's best features. Did not mean to come
across as arrogant. I understand it will be useful to some people who don't
care or who are unable to pay $30 for Frutiger.

~~~
cjensen
I'd pay $30 in a heartbeat if I could ship Frutiger with my applications. The
Intel font can be used for that.

Web guys have it easy when it comes to fonts.

~~~
ambiguator
Ahh yes, you'd owe Linotype a few hundred bucks if you want to do that. I'd
love to see Adrian Frutiger release an open source font before he goes...
Imagine if Univers was free!

~~~
cjensen
I'd be okay with a few hundred too. The issue for me is that for web use
prices are easily available. For programatic use, it suddenly becomes a
conversation about licensing with a salesman, and I don't have time for a long
conversation.

------
nilsbunger
No @2x image? Seems like it would be helpful if you're trying to highlight a
clear, readable typeface. Looks kinda blurry on my retina MBP.

~~~
javindo
Was going to say similar; it's quite ironic how a site advertising a "clear
font" has a very blurry graphic right in the middle of the page demonstrating
said clear font...

~~~
espadrine
It's even stranger considering that they bundle the corresponding SVG font
(great and uncommon choice!) – they could have made an SVG image.

------
clarle
For anyone like me that was wondering about the open source license they were
using, it's licensed under the Apache License 2.0 (so it's GPL-compatible).

~~~
pseut
Was that anywhere on the website? I had to download the font to figure out its
license.

~~~
orand
It also specifies the license in their blog post announcing the font.
[https://01.org/clear-sans/blogs/gailfrederick/2013/clear-
san...](https://01.org/clear-sans/blogs/gailfrederick/2013/clear-sans-new-
font-optimized-small-screen-readability)

------
Geee
The 'Nokia Pure' is one of the best (if not the best, IMO) of the modern sans
types. Pretty unique but very clean. It's used on their website (as Windows
Phones use Segoe UI), and apparently on the new Android phone too (notice the
'g'), for example: [http://www.nokia.com/global/products/phone/nokia-
xl/](http://www.nokia.com/global/products/phone/nokia-xl/)

I'm just hoping that someone would make a similar but open-source version of
it. :)

~~~
abrowne
I love Nokia Pure too. It looks great on their website and on the Asha phone
I've used. The 4 is great.

For personal use, Nokia did post a version with Klingon character support (in
addition to Latin) on their design blog for April Fools last year:
[https://assetportal.nokia.com/blog/view/item24419/](https://assetportal.nokia.com/blog/view/item24419/)

------
leobelle
I'm not a font specialists, but those I's seem to have serifs [1], and mixing
serif with non-serif kind of irks me.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I#Forms_and_variants](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I#Forms_and_variants)

~~~
aidos
Genuine question, does it matter? I, for one, am enjoying being able to
distinguish a capital I from a lowercase l :)

~~~
leobelle
What's a word where that is a problem? In coding it would be a problem, but I
don't use sans-serif flexible width fonts when writing code.

Edit: asking a question == downvote. I never said it wasn't a problem.
Spending more time on lobste.rs anyway, this place is declining at breakneck
speeds.

~~~
aidos
As someone who spent embarrassingly long trying to log in to a system one
afternoon because I was misreading an "l" as an "I", I can say that it does
sometimes matter - it doesn't need to be in the same word.

Then again, since you set the challenge - lamb and Iamb

I can see no good reason for us to ever use the same symbol to represent two
different letters, that's just silly business.

Edit: for the record, I didn't downvote you. Interestingly enough, I just
noticed that it looks as though I can no longer downvote direct replies to my
comments. Seems like a reasonable rule to have in place.

------
pyrocat
I like Open Sans
[http://www.google.com/fonts/specimen/Open+Sans](http://www.google.com/fonts/specimen/Open+Sans)

~~~
rkuykendall-com
I love Open Sans and use it as my default font for everything, but... I may
soon be trying out this Clear Sans.

------
Mithaldu
The font doesn't have hinting and ends up looking not very good at small
sizes.

~~~
rjd
I agree, I can't read the text without my glasses on.

In comparison from the same distance and size I can read almost every other
font I encounter on the web.

------
telvda
I was hopping this would be a new monospace font considering it's on the front
page. It's okay, but there are _much_ better open source fonts out there.

~~~
telvda
Also, for something that's emphasizing thin weight only the bold weight has
italics? What's with that?

~~~
ambiguator
It has a regular weight italic in addition to the bold italic.

------
lifeformed
Why can't I click on the specimen and view it in full size? :(

------
satellitecat
I was expecting a transparent/invisible font.. Disappointed.

------
slowernet
Note that the included webfont variants have fairly enormous filesizes (WOFFs:
120K+, SVG: 1.2M+).

Quickly running the .ttf through FontSquirrel at default settings produced
versions several times smaller (caveat lector, not sure what glyphs are being
stripped out, etc.)

~~~
degenerate
Can you elaborate on this? (do you know why running it through FontSquirrel
results in smaller sizes?)

~~~
fadeyev
FontSquirrel's generator will strip out a lot of unneeded characters. By
default this means including just the basic Latin subset with the main
punctuation glyphs. If you look at the character set for Clear Sans
([http://www.fontsquirrel.com/fonts/clear-
sans](http://www.fontsquirrel.com/fonts/clear-sans)) you will see that it
includes Cyrillic and Greek letters, among other things like musical notes and
smilie faces, so those can be removed if you don't want them (or included if
you do).

------
marban
On a related note, FontPrep is now free & open source
[http://fontprep.com](http://fontprep.com) (Generate Webfonts from OTF/TTF)

------
th3byrdm4n
I find it difficult to read @ size 14. My eyes don't like how thin/compressed
the letters are, but maybe it's just too early on Oahu.

------
izietto
I love Ubuntu fonts [http://font.ubuntu.com/](http://font.ubuntu.com/)

------
blt
Poor hinting on Windows 7 / Chrome. The lowercase L is an especially
noticeable 2px middle-grey line.

~~~
aeflash
Just have to wait for this bugfix to make it to Chrome stable:

[https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=249099](https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=249099)

------
vertex-four
I have no idea whether this is just my problem or something that more people
will notice, but I actually have trouble reading that. The letters seem to
blur together more than most common fonts, and seem "fuzzy" in general.

------
jheriko
wait.... really?

am i the only one who sees this?

[http://imgur.com/apYhmRw](http://imgur.com/apYhmRw)

glancability? that l is an embarassment. sorry, but the idea that this a well
designed font is to me - a joke. and i am not particularly an expert. this is
much less readable than comic sans or courier new imo at least with my config
on windows 8 with cleartype and chrome!

~~~
Gracana
That looks terrible. Nothing like what I see on Firefox 27 on OS X. I wonder
why?

~~~
gcp
Chrome's font rendering is terrible. Can't do proper sub-pixel positioning,
deficiencies in the anti-aliasing, etc...

------
splitbrain
looks nice, but no info which scripts it covers?

~~~
thristian
The Linux tool "fc-scan" claims that it covers the following languages: "aa af
av ay be bg bi bin br bs ca ce ch co cs cy da de el en eo es et eu fi fj fo fr
fur fy gd gl gn gv ho hr hu ia ig id ie ik io is it ki kl kum la lb lez lt lv
mg mh mk mo mt nb nds nl nn no nr nso ny oc om os pl pt rm ro ru se sel sk sl
sma smj smn so sq sr ss st sv sw tk tl tn tr ts uk uz vo vot wa wen wo xh yap
zu an crh csb fil hsb ht jv kj ku-tr kwm lg li ms na ng pap-an pap-aw rn rw sc
sg sn su za"

------
omegote
This looks like the next Proxima Nova.

God please do something to stop every single website from using Proxima
Nova...

~~~
gulbrandr
What is wrong with it?

------
scott_karana
Hmm, this has been out since November. Wish I'd seen it then. :-)

Mods, worth updating the title?

------
hiphopyo
Further proof that the world doesn't need any more fonts.

~~~
noir_lord
It's brilliant that you polled all 7 billion people, did I miss my survey in
the post?.

------
benched
Either there is a piece missing from my brain that prevents me telling the
difference between fonts in the same general category, or some of y'all are
discussing the stitching on the emperor's new shirt.

------
celebril
Do we honestly need Yet Another Humanist Sans Serif?

