As much as I appreciate the tiny serif for lowercase L and numeral 1 to differentiate l I and 1, I am not the biggest fan of the capital I glyph without the horizontal serifs. It's my biggest design gripe with most sans-serif fonts as it makes it FRUSTRATINGLY difficult to differentiate when looking at words by themselves.
Is that lota or Iota? Is that iodestone or lodestone? Both real examples where I fumbled reading them -- once in front of a class :)
This is why my favorite sans-serif typeface has been (and will always be) IBM Plex Sans [1]. It's an open font [2]. I have all my laptops and desktops set to using the IBM Plex typefaces, including browser overrides. If only there were a way to do it system-wide on my Android phone...
IBM Plex is very good. Recently, I have been enjoying https://rsms.me/inter/ for interfaces a bit more (with ss02 for body and ss02+tnum for tables activated).
Inter is the only libre typeface that has good coverage, and produces readable small text on terrible 80 DPI displays. I've tested probably hundreds of them.
Ah, it initially appeared that the capital I and the lowercase L have identical-looking glyphs. But scrolling down, I see the ss02 and tnum features add noticeable glyphs. Looks like a nice typeface.
I really enjoyed reading through [1] as it gives a lot of insight into what goes into making a font. However I wonder what incentives does IBM have for putting this much work into making it public, accessible and widely used. Wouldn't the ubiquity of the font make it less strong for their brand identity?
I don’t think it’s that straightforward to answer that. They’re both body fonts. Public Sans is a bit wider (as it isn’t geometric) and roboto seems a bit thicker. Besides these bits which can be worked around, they’re functionally too similar. Maybe you’d prefer to use Public Sans because it’s less condensed which works well for readability of smaller fonts that would be in a body of text. But you can just adjust a number of things to get what you’re looking for here.
A more vague answer I can think of is that it’s preferential and doesn’t matter to most — with designers just being highly particular about preferences, in a way that isn’t really open to objective choice. One font may display slightly better but the other font pairs better with the title font. Or we’ll look for specific issues that I don’t really see in either fonts.
Another generic limited font that isn't solving anything.
No Arabic, Cyrillic, Hebrew, not even Greek letters (poor frats and physicists). I understand it's a product of the US government, but don't they have international relations requiring using characters other than Latin? It's not even a recent font, so you'd think inclusivity was important. So much for the cultural pluralism.
And a site without a character table, which means I had to download the font to check if it's of any use.
No, looks like it was started late in Obama's second term. As for the current guys, they would probably use Instrument Serif for body text if they could.
Went down a short rabbit hole from this comment and they actually are using a condensed serif font like that on www.whitehouse.gov titles at the moment.
That's just the State Department. The federal government is a huge amalgamation of agencies, each with its own set of goals, responsibilities, and quirks. Even down at the local level, I've had a hard time getting the county and the city to agree on who owns the storm drain where the neighborhood connects to the highway.
As much as I appreciate the tiny serif for lowercase L and numeral 1 to differentiate l I and 1, I am not the biggest fan of the capital I glyph without the horizontal serifs. It's my biggest design gripe with most sans-serif fonts as it makes it FRUSTRATINGLY difficult to differentiate when looking at words by themselves.
Is that lota or Iota? Is that iodestone or lodestone? Both real examples where I fumbled reading them -- once in front of a class :)
This is why my favorite sans-serif typeface has been (and will always be) IBM Plex Sans [1]. It's an open font [2]. I have all my laptops and desktops set to using the IBM Plex typefaces, including browser overrides. If only there were a way to do it system-wide on my Android phone...
[1]: https://www.ibm.com/plex/
[2]: https://github.com/IBM/plex/blob/master/LICENSE.txt
Preview: https://fonts.google.com/specimen/IBM+Plex+Sans?preview.text...
IBM Plex is very good. Recently, I have been enjoying https://rsms.me/inter/ for interfaces a bit more (with ss02 for body and ss02+tnum for tables activated).
Hasn't Inter been the default tech font for the last 5 years or so by virtue of being the default font in Figma? The Times New Roman of UI.
Oh, is that why everyone uses it? I just assumed people wanted knockoff San Francisco on purpose
Inter is the only libre typeface that has good coverage, and produces readable small text on terrible 80 DPI displays. I've tested probably hundreds of them.
Ah, it initially appeared that the capital I and the lowercase L have identical-looking glyphs. But scrolling down, I see the ss02 and tnum features add noticeable glyphs. Looks like a nice typeface.
Nice. Inter even has "U+1E9E" "Latin Capital Letter Sharp S" and two lower case sharp s variants as well.
Inter has also become my default.
Inter or linter?
Feature ss02 Disambiguation (one of many)
Alternate glyph set that increases visual difference between similar-looking characters.
Why isn't it the default? :( I'm rarely in control of how a font is used.
Shoutout to Atkinson Hyperlegible Next, designed for the Braille Institut having excellent glyph differentiation ("Next" with variable weight)
https://fonts.google.com/specimen/Atkinson+Hyperlegible+Next
I'm extremely picky and Atkinson Hyperlegible was my favorite variable-width font. Never knew there's a "Next", so +
This is what I switch to whenever a default font annoys me because of poor glyph differentiation. It's what it says on the tin.
I really enjoyed reading through [1] as it gives a lot of insight into what goes into making a font. However I wonder what incentives does IBM have for putting this much work into making it public, accessible and widely used. Wouldn't the ubiquity of the font make it less strong for their brand identity?
Depending on your phone manufacturer, zFont 3 has been solid for me for setting system wide fonts.
Plex Monospace is great for coding as well.
My full list of ambiguous letters, from https://gajus.com/blog/avoiding-visually-ambiguous-character...
- O / 0 - I / l / 1 / 7 - 5 / S - 2 / Z - 8 / B - 6 / G - 9 / q / g
U / V
?
anything on digital.gov is at best on life support given 18F was disbanded and much of the government digital service efforts have been neglected
The fonts are open and on github
The Secretary of State recently decreed that sans serif fonts were woke and mandated all communications use Times New Roman.
God, I was so hopeful that you were joking but I guess I should know better by now.
I thought it was a joke, then I checked.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/dec/10/trump-times-...
The quote is milder and the "woke" bit was added by others, but the context is essentially correct.
In an interview, the font's creator took it as a compliment and was a good sport about it.
I doubt they got the memo.
No way fonts isn't a solved problem by now.
[delayed]
Previous discussion 2019: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19607371
why is the federal government using tax dollars to develop fonts?
What does "strong" mean here? Doesn't it contradict "neutral"?
Anyway, the "c" and "e" are closing in too much.
Switzerland is strong and neutral. Pardon my little joke, as I have lots of Swiss friends. I hear ya.
Are there any designers here who can explain when the differences between Public Sans and Roboto Sans and when to use one or the other?
I don’t think it’s that straightforward to answer that. They’re both body fonts. Public Sans is a bit wider (as it isn’t geometric) and roboto seems a bit thicker. Besides these bits which can be worked around, they’re functionally too similar. Maybe you’d prefer to use Public Sans because it’s less condensed which works well for readability of smaller fonts that would be in a body of text. But you can just adjust a number of things to get what you’re looking for here.
A more vague answer I can think of is that it’s preferential and doesn’t matter to most — with designers just being highly particular about preferences, in a way that isn’t really open to objective choice. One font may display slightly better but the other font pairs better with the title font. Or we’ll look for specific issues that I don’t really see in either fonts.
Another generic limited font that isn't solving anything.
No Arabic, Cyrillic, Hebrew, not even Greek letters (poor frats and physicists). I understand it's a product of the US government, but don't they have international relations requiring using characters other than Latin? It's not even a recent font, so you'd think inclusivity was important. So much for the cultural pluralism.
And a site without a character table, which means I had to download the font to check if it's of any use.
Not a great job.
Looking forward to the National Design Studio getting it's arms around this
Isn't this from the people who hate Calibri?
Funnily enough, if you Google "Calibri", the page itself is in Calibri. I've never seen that happen for any other font.
No, looks like it was started late in Obama's second term. As for the current guys, they would probably use Instrument Serif for body text if they could.
Went down a short rabbit hole from this comment and they actually are using a condensed serif font like that on www.whitehouse.gov titles at the moment.
No, this was a project by 18F and the U.S. Web Design group that debued several years back.
This predates the Calibri-Times debacle by quite a few years.
That's just the State Department. The federal government is a huge amalgamation of agencies, each with its own set of goals, responsibilities, and quirks. Even down at the local level, I've had a hard time getting the county and the city to agree on who owns the storm drain where the neighborhood connects to the highway.
As a utility designer in my day job who frequents HN for real fun, this comment hits hard.
I must say it's very pleasant. Much better than a lot of the fonts I see on the web these days.
I want to like it but I feel like it neuters everything I like about Franklin Gothic/Libre Franklin.
For some reason I always thought that Plus Jakarta Sans was forked from on Public Sans.
<https://tokotype.github.io/plusjakarta-sans/>
Which for some other reason always makes me think of the book The Jakarta Method:
<https://www.librarything.com/work/24301785/t/The-Jakarta-Met...>
Weirdly, it reminds me of Aptos, the new default font in Microsoft products.
To clarify, it is the default font for office documents, not the default UI font.
I must say I like Libre Franklin (which they compare it to in the github repo) better, especially the rounded vertices.