The Future and Past of Apple’s San Francisco Font

Mark Gurman reports that iOS 9 and OS X 10.11 might very well get the San Francisco Font, currently used on the Apple Watch. If true Helvetica Neue will go down in history as the George Lazenby of Mac fonts. Given that Apple designed the San Francisco font, I would not be least bit surprised if they brought it to all of their platforms. (John Gruber points out that San Francisco is now the font used on the new MacBook keyboard.)

I like San Francisco on the watch. It is clean and clearly designed to be on a screen and not piece of paper. I have no idea how San Francisco will look on the phone and Mac, but I’m curious. I’m probably not the person to make such decisions though since I was a fan of, and actually turned in a college paper using the original Mac San Francisco font. Yes. This one.


Butterick’s Practical Typography

Mathew Butterick has been quietly fixing typography in the practice of law for years with his Typography for Lawyers website and accompanying book which, by the way, every lawyer should read once, pause, then read again.

Most recently Mathew has a new project, Practical Typography, which everyone should read. It doesn’t take long and includes great, useful typography tips such as:

“Avoid goofy fonts, mono­spaced fonts, and sys­tem fonts, especially times new roman and Arial.”

If you’ve wanted to clean up your own typography act but don’t want to spend a lot of time on the endeavor, check out Practical Typography. It will set you right.