
Twitter stops using Helevetica Neue in favour of Gotham - kenrick95
https://twitter.com/Support/statuses/472493972032466944
======
tvladeck
I'm getting so frustrated with Twitter, as a shareholder and big believer in
the company. I really think they need to be focusing on new services and
experiences (actual new functionality!) with the content on their platform.

For example, many of their users are quite passive - why not improve the
experience for the logged-out user? Twitter could be a great source of real-
time news for _everyone_ \- not just heavy users of the platform.

In addition, did you know that if you paste a url into the search you can see
the tweets that link to it? There are great conversations happening about
published stories - yet that content has no way to get surfaced, really. I
should be able to see the twitter conversations that are happening around
every piece of content on the web, and I can't! That's crazy.

I get that design is important, but Twitter needs to innovate on its product.
Rant over.

~~~
revelation
The logged-out user experience (or even just the web/mobile experience) is
really odd. Apart from a bar permanently blocking screen real estate telling
you to signup/login, there are times where it simply doesn't work (not down,
just not working), translations are mismatched/wrong, things like viewing an
image.. simply don't work, and never have for me. It literally gives a black
popup with nothing happening and this old iPhone 1.0 feel to it.

For a long time, they didn't even manage to provide an up to date version of
someones tweets. Heres a realtime communication website, and yet when logged
out, tweets would be at times delayed for hours and days.

~~~
sesqu
The most common thing I struggle with as an accountless user is linking to
tweets. It can take me a good while to find a link to a tweet I'm looking at.

The second most common problem I have is finding a user, even if I know their
handle. It was hard to believe how difficult that was the first time I tried
it (admittedly, vanity URLs have made this easier).

~~~
kisielk
As a user with an account, I _also_ struggle with linking to tweets. The
process right now is something like this:

1\. See tweet in timeline, click the "expand" link in the lower left, or just
some other blank spot in the tweet. 2\. Hunt around until I see the non-
obvious de-emphasized "details" link in light grey next to the date. 3\. Click
the "details" link and load the full page for the tweet. 4\. Copy the link
from the browser URL bar.

I don't know why they make it so hard and require me to load a whole other
page and interrupt my timeline browsing flow. Annoyingly there's a "more" link
on each tweet which I always end up checking anyway, and it doesn't have an
option to copy a link to the tweet! You can "share via email" or "embed tweet"
but neither of those gives you a useful URL you can just paste somewhere. The
UI is a train wreck.

~~~
BorisMelnik
you can also click or right click on the hour right next to the tweet which
will give you a permalink to the tweet.

~~~
kisielk
Obvious and discoverable. I never even realized the time was a link, and I use
the twitter web UI every day.

~~~
BorisMelnik
really good point. There was a discussion on NPR the other day about how un-
intuitive Twitter was and how most normal people just don't get even what a
retweet is, what a hashtag is, or the whole reply system on Twitter.

For example the fact that if you start a tweet with @ it will not show up on
your feed. Stuff like that.

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masterleep
I care less about what font is used and more about not having the text
displayed at seemingly random sizes from one page to another, or even on the
same page. Insanity!

~~~
logn
I agree with this. The random size fonts took me a while to understand what it
meant until I realized my popular tweets were a bigger font. I like the
uniformity of one font size. If they want to indicate which tweets are
important then add data showing stats but don't mess with font sizes.

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Avitas
Here is a comparison with Helvetica (not HN) and Gotham with commentary and
history:

[http://thinkcreateblog.wordpress.com/2010/03/26/face-
off/](http://thinkcreateblog.wordpress.com/2010/03/26/face-off/)

~~~
PhantomGremlin
The problem with that article is it's too "inside baseball". It's probably
great for font aficionados. But I just want some simple side-by-side images
showing how the two fonts differ.

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mahouse
What about us Windows users that have always seen Arial?

With all honesty, Gotham looks very bad when drawn by the ClearType renderer.

~~~
LoganCale
Everything looks bad with ClearType.

~~~
scotth
These days it does, but I remember that when ClearType first came out it was
mind-blowing. These days it's looking pretty shabby when compared to high
density displays.

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alelefant
I'm by no means a typography expert, in fact I don't particularly care about
typography all that much. I like the new font, but there's some characters
(e.g. "o") that just seem like they have an extra pixel or two on the outer
edge. It still looks nice and clean though.

------
kevinwang
It looks good. But Helvetica was good too. Anyone have any thoughts on why the
switch?

~~~
Goopplesoft
From their assets site:

> Words don’t just hold meaning; they communicate by their very form. We
> primarily use the Gotham font family: elegant and direct, stylish but not
> exclusive. Putting well-designed words in our product enhances the user
> experience.

Not sure what the 'but not exclusive.' is implying though...

Source: [https://about.twitter.com/press/brand-
assets](https://about.twitter.com/press/brand-assets)

~~~
80
Still not sure if I agree with it but Lawrence Weiner has a great quote on
Helvetica:

"[Helvetica] it’s one of the type faces that I absolutely detest. It’s totally
authoritative. It in fact does not adapt itself to things and all information
that comes out in Helvetica is saying exactly the same thing: this is
cultural, this is intellectual, and this is intelligent. I’m rather afraid
that words don’t start off being cultural, intellectual, or intelligent."

~~~
joezydeco
Except you know what? I can _see_ Helvetica on my screen. Gotham is literally
disappearing into the background.

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bluthru
Does the tracking seem really wide to anyone else? It makes the tweets
difficult to read and causes the words to blend together.

------
chestnut-tree
EDIT: Oops, posted in the wrong spot, this was meant to be a reply to
tvladeck's post.

 _" In addition, did you know that if you paste a url into the search you can
see the tweets that link to it? There are great conversations happening about
published stories - yet that content has no way to get surfaced"_

I've done this before to view what people are saying about a link or story,
but I disagree about "great conversations" taking place. A lot of people
simply re-tweet a link or add a few words, but I'd argue that often there is
no great insight or "discussion" and most of it is disconnected from other
twitter users. (Can you really have a great "conversation" using a 140
character limit?)

I do agree that twitter doesn't use it's content to best effect. There are a
lot of users who cluster around shared interests and twitter could aggregate
interesting links that are constantly being posted around topics. Other sites
like Buzzfeed and Storify editorialise a story by picking tweets that reflect
a range of opinions around a story. Is this something that Twitter should do?
(I don't know) It would be a shift in focus for them and something not all
users would welcome.

Anyway, back to the original story - I'm glad they've dropped Helevtica. It's
too over-used and feels like a bland but safe choice for designers. Not sure
about Gotham yet. It feels a bit too tall and narrow.

------
ereckers
Hilarious. It was totally noticeable today when I visited a user Twitter
homepage. I actually thought they started allowing user customizations per
page. I thought the MySpace conversion was starting in earnest.

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largehotcoffee
Honestly all of the new design changes at Twitter have been looking awful. I
can only assume there is someone new in charge that is messing everything up.

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tonymon
Well, now it seems like they totally screwed up with non-latin characters.

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hnriot
On my non retina mac this doesn't look very good at all. Obviously I need a
new laptop to keep up with Twitter.

------
devanti
Reminds me of Comic Sans

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interg12
Is anybody else bothered by the amount of news this is causing?

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doctorshady
What if you're a Lynx user?

~~~
m_mueller
... you won't care?

~~~
doctorshady
As opposed to if you weren't a Lynx user?

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hiphopyo
Twitter just went from being an ubiquitous part of our everyday lives to some
silly art project.

#wrongmove

~~~
Gracana
Because they changed the font from one well-known and widely used font to
another?

~~~
hiphopyo
You talk as if they're the same.

