What an interesting thread to read. "Typography aficionados" are one of the most ardent and vocal subcultures within the Hacker News community. Any given post may be hijacked at any time, for a meta-discussion about the font choices on that post's linked web page.<p>When a post actually IS about a new font, people dissect that latest microscopic riff on Helvetica like whiskey snobs describing a spirit's nose and mouthfeel.<p>However, a strong cross-cutting theme on HN is "hating Reddit even though you obviously spend a lot of time there". It's a clash of the titans, and a real role-reversal... this may be the first time I've ever seen a post <i>about</i> fonts mostly hijacked by something else instead.
First of all, this is a surprisingly nice font. Modern, clean, it has personality but it's legibile. Well done!<p>It has some similarities to Product Sans that Google has been rolling out in its interfaces [1] -- suggesting Futura [2], but Google's version is clunky and backwards-looking, while Reddit Sans is far more elegant and up-to-date.<p>I do wonder if they're going to use it for the body text of conversation threads though? Because it still feels more like a display typeface than body text, with its highly geometric styling. It looks great in the tag bubbles they show, and it'll be superb for headlines and things, but I'm not sure I'd want to read comments in it -- but their blog post suggests that's what it's for.<p>Using this geometric styling is what Google's done with all of its Workspace interface now (Gmail, Docs, etc.) and I think it's been a big mistake. Futura has always been best as a display font, not for body text, and I don't understand why Google has moved from Roboto to Product Sans for things like menus or e-mail subject lines.<p>[1] <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Product_Sans" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Product_Sans</a><p>[2] <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Futura_(typeface)" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Futura_(typeface)</a>
I'm surprised to see a new brand font in nearly-2024 that doesn't have variable axes.*<p>* <a href="https://fonts.google.com/knowledge/introducing_type/introducing_variable_fonts" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://fonts.google.com/knowledge/introducing_type/introduc...</a>
any explanation of why they embarked on a custom font? it's not such a simple task and most people wouldn't really appreciate the difference if they used arial for everything