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iTerm (on macOS): https://berkeleygraphics-public.s3.amazonaws.com/static/imag...

I don't have a linux desktop handy, I'll create a full suite of screenshots in various environments and languages to post on the website.




Thanks for working on this. I’ve always been into type and hand-lettering, did a bit of letterpress work, am almost done with a graphic design BFA where I really dug into type and typesetting. I also spent the last 12 years as a developer (and also interface design most recently,) and the better part of the prior decade in nix systems administration and software support… monospaced fonts are a bizarrely perfect convergence of interests! I also applaud your willingness to solicit open critique from folks outside the field. The domain the font is hosted on indicates you do design work professionally, so I’ll offer a customarily frank ‘pinned up on the wall in the studio’ design critique. Apologies if it seems overly frank. I only offer it because I think it’s worth critiquing.

Based on this screenshot, the readability suffers because the typographic color (edit for non-type-nerds… basically the density of ink in any block of text if printed in black)* is too dark. Single lines aren’t bad even if words could stand to be tracked out a touch, but the density makes entire blocks pretty tough to parse quickly, which is a showstopper for scanning logs. Outside of a terminal, you could mitigate it with leading and tracking to some extent. Even then, the combination of slightly heavy stroke weight, tall x-height, and comparatively tight packing make it feel pretty cramped.

Formally, the glyphs generally sit nicely as well-balanced individual artifacts, but the relationships don’t materialize to form visually fluid words. For example, if you look at “BERKELEY” in your title SVG, the slope on top of the B and R either needs to start later or needs to be more severe. With the strong horizontal created by the cap line in all the other letters, the very slight curve starting that early makes it seem uneven rather than softened. There isn’t enough horizontal momentum or obvious departure from it to look deliberate, and everything else is too uniform for that subtlety to look appropriate. Menlo, as probably the closest mono analog, resolves that tension by starting the curve later and making giving it a more deliberate attack.

I don’t think this has too far to go before being adapted, but those types of issues are what I’d expect to see in an open source type family rather than a $75 bundle. Having a flat price and throwing in a bunch of extra seats compared to the big foundries doesn’t really make sense. To business customers, $75 once vs some user based licensing billed out periodically doesn’t make much of a difference. Individual folks hesitate to pay $39 for Matthew Carter’s gorgeous Big Caslon because they don’t want to pay $39, not because they don’t get enough seats.




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