When Apple launched the Watch, it also designed a new system font to go with it: San Francisco. The typeface was specifically designed to combine a clean look with readability on the small display of the Apple Watch.
We exclusively revealed last week that Apple doesn’t intend to limit San Francisco to the watch: it instead plans to adopt the new typeface for Macs, iPhones and iPads. San Francisco is expected to replace Helvetica Neue as part of iOS 9 and OS X 10.11. Designer Wenting Zhang features the font in a look at “the beautiful details of the type forms that often get overlooked” …
The Type Detail project is aimed at typography fans, so you won’t find explanations of the technical terms use in the visual analysis, but it does reveal a few of the details that make San Francisco easy to read even in very small sizes.
One of the keys to readability is what is described as the large x-height: lower-case letters are around 75% of the height of capitals, making lower-case letters larger than in a typical font. The ‘eye’ of letters like e and a – the gap between the tail and the rest of the letter – are also larger than usual.
The site shows what the typeface looks like in a range of sizes, weights and styles, and says that it is similar to Open Sans and Arial.
Don’t expect too many new features in either iOS 9 or OS X 10.11: multiple sources tell our Mark Gurman that both updates will focus more on quality and stability than headline features. If you don’t want to wait for OS X 10.11, you can download a modified version of the font now and install it as your system font in Yosemite.
Via TNW
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Obviously benefits things that are small like the Watch, but also things that have very high DPI like the 5K iMac and any future Cinema Displays. :)
The watch has a vry high dpi at 326.
This is actually a much better font.
Well the GIT site the article points to has been taken down via DCMA.
Thanks for the info, Matt
Eurostile. *That’s* what this typeface reminds me of.
No, you’re o’style…
Great news! San Francisco has always been the best font Apple has ever created.
The only real question is: what took them so long to give this beautiful font the recognition it so richly deserves?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Francisco_(1984_typeface)
dont take it bad.. but that font looks like a rip off from the font nokia uses on their asha line
well i won’t upgrade if it will really happen. helvetica neu is the best font ever designed.
ah there really is no such thing as ‘best font ever’. fonts have different purposes and one font can’t do it all. helvetica neue is best suited to display; it was never intended to be run small (12pt and below) because its apertures are not very generous, making it harder to read. (if it were able to do everything, novels and newspapers would be typeset in helvetica.) generous apertures and a hefty x-height (say 75%) help readability, especially for sans serifs. san fran is a better choice across the various devices from mac to watch.
If Helvetica and Eurostyle had a baby it would look like San Francisco. Kudos to the designers; this feels like an instant thoroughbred and not a mutt.