Microsoft would absolutely be the first company that springs to mind when talking fonts, for me. Microsoft Word was surely a lot of people's introduction to the entire concept of choosing a font?
Microsoft PowerPoint, oh god… I remember trying to make quirky little advertisements for shit aged 7 in PowerPoint, because that was the only program I had. “Buy Bubble Tea!” in Freestyle Script, “Fulton IT Service: Phone Repairs half off” in Magneto, I fancied myself a graphic designer with all these Microsoft fonts on my hands.
I know, I watched a few of his videos, expecting him to have a million subs or so, but after reading this comment, realised that he only has around 25k
I can't believe this channel isn't more known. You manage to take niche and technical subjects and make them interesting to listen to. This is a goldmine of content.
Linus, if you're still reading these comments, I'd love to see your breakdown of some of the so-called "worst" fonts ever used. Stuff like Jokerman, Papyrus, Lobster, etc. They all look pretty ridiculous but seem to get a ton of use
Lobster (the script face) isn't bad. I'm surprised to see it listed. -- I don't get the hate against Papyrus or Comic Sans. Both are fine and the public likes them a lot. I wish Papyrus had a bold and an extra bold weight. Comic Sans is quirky but casual and friendly. People _like_ it. A lot. This says something, regardless of any complaints designers and typographers may have. Are they overused? Yes. But so is Helvetica (and Arial). I had to use Helvetica so much that I now try to avoid it as much as possible, yet it's neutral and legible, except for a few things like the cap I / lowercase L, and a few other things. (I could go down a list.) -- The default fonts for the web and desktop almost all have some issues, whether they are legacy designs centuries old or newly made especially for on-screen. -- Why does Georgia have non-lining figures at the default, instead of lining? it would've been so much more usable. Other oddities like that. (Trebuchet is interesting and legible. I still like Candara but again, I don't like non-lining figures.) -- There are some great fonts, new and old, out there, and as designers or typographers, we need to understand why the public likes some fonts we might not like; why they think those look good or are more readable or distinctive. We also need to use what's out there and explore. -- I remember the "old days" when the LaserWriter was new and those 35 included fonts were what you had to work with, plus whatever else you could afford, and Adobe and only a few others were the computer font vendors / foundries. Then the web came along, but you had no way to put good-looking or eye-catching fonts on web pages except through (ugh) turning them into graphics (which Word stupidly still does too often). Then we bot web fonts, but with limited usability because the big companies made it hard to include them for rights issues. We've had some better alternatives in some cases, and in rights-free, open fonts, but then the rights for web fonts for those became a problem too, and at least one major provider, if you are offline, boom, your web fonts do not work at all, because they want to check with bigbrther to see if they're legal, when you bought and paid for the rights to use them! So we still have hurdles to go through, even though there's much good out there too.
love love love how you don’t shy away from using industry terms but also take the time to define them, makes it enjoyable as someone who knows a little about typography and knows very little about typography :D
Speaking as someone with Dyslexia, Comic Sans is the single most readable font I have ever, ever used. Considering it was originally designed for use in a children’s game, it’s incredible readability at all coherent sizes makes total sense. What it comes down to so far as I can tell, is that each character is a genuinely unique shape; there is no visual confusion at all. An ‘I’ does not masquerade as an ‘l’, which always annoys me with more “palatable” modern fonts. I would not have been able to get through high school or college without my buddy Comic Sans, and I think there’s a discussion to be had about ableism in type fonts, the infantilization of the disabled, and it’s correlation with Comic Sans hate. For me, it’s the best type font that’s ever existed, and I’m glad to have it. Absolutely amazing channel; so glad I subscribed!!!
". An ‘I’ does not masquerade as an ‘l’, which always annoys me with more “palatable” modern fonts. " I'm not dyslexic but that pisses me off too, especially since it's so easy to fix. It's like it was designed stupid on purpose.
@@isodoublet yeah, even most programmer fonts can distinguish them and still look fine so like, i don't get why regular fonts can't just add a few little bits to distinguish them better
@@dustinm2717 My favorite programming font is Source Code Pro for that reason. There's no way to confuse 1, l and I because they all look quite different. It's aesthetically pleasing too so yeah.
You absolutely did not talk way too long about fonts! I know I am late to the party viewing this video, and you probably won’t even see this comment, but I found this video completely and utterly fascinating. I can’t imagine the huge amount of research that went into it. I really enjoyed how deep you got into the weeds of each font’s particular design features and the intricate history behind them all. Excellent in every way. I am enjoying your other content too. Keep up the great work!
"It might be more exciting to talk about the automotive design of a rare Ferrari or a Bugatti, but if you want to learn about the design that impacts the average person's experience, there's a lot more to be gleaned from looking at a Toyota Camry" - this line absolutely sums up what design for the public is all about! Thanks for bringing this out, a real gem this video!
oh, I would love a world without adobe. they've single-handedly gimped all competition in their niche with restrictive and overreaching patent-trolling.
Adobe is the only company i am completely fine with pirating from, until they wanna stop patenting what could be basic features (but aren't because adobe patented them) then screw them they don't deserve our money -also patents kinda suck in general tbh-
You don’t actually work in the graphics field, do you? What competition was there for Photoshop in 1994? Nothing. Lol And still, you better know if if you’re going to work in the field. Same with Illustrator and InDesign. I’ve been using Photoshop professionally since version 2.5.
I know this is an old video but since I’m watching it, might be worth saying anyway. I wrote a post on r/dyslexia about this… Please. If you produce materials for dyslexic people, *do not* just make it in Comic Sans cuz you heard it’s better, likely from someone who isn’t dyslexic. This also applies to those specific dyslexia friendly fonts too. The weird weighting, *may* help someone, but it may make it harder to read for another. Dyslexics are people, and they each need specialised accommodations for their learning difficulty. Ask them, please don’t dictate a font you *think* might work better.
This, exactly. As someone with (admittedly fairly mild) dyslexia, I do die a little inside whenever I see comic sans even when it’s been put there to supposedly help me. Other typefaces work
You're one of the very, very few English-speaking people I can watch without subtitles with zero problems. You make me feel like my English is better than it probably is. Congratulations on your clarity of speech. I mean, sometimes I even use subtitles on Spanish people speaking Spanish because their accent is different than mine. Kudos!
Linus Boman clearly treats communication seriously and has a wonderful accent that synthesizes Australian, English and American to excellent effect. If only the rest of our colinguals would feel the inspiration.
This Australian accent is from the south of Australia, he's probably from Melbourne and so were his parents, all well educated. These are the good sounding Australians. Not like people from the north of Australia who sound like Steve Irwin rejects, for example, me 😅
I subscribed immediately once I saw that business card font explanation. I’m loving your channel, please do a “your business card is crap“ video! Thank you so much keep up the good work.
I'll always have a special place in my heart for Verdana, which I decided as a budding child webmaster in the early 2000s was absolutely the best-looking option of the common web fonts. Still a big fan
Thank you Linus, these are impeccably produced. I'd be greatly interested in a WordArt video. I can't be the only one who messed around with those awful presets in PowerPoint as a child, like one might with Paint.
Thanks hecticvexed - yes, that's definitely why it appeals to me as a topic! It's amazing what held our attention as kids in the 90s before the internet, eh? 😄
@@LinusBoman I remember making one FULL page worth of wordart title (yup, one big wordart and only that for the first page) for the works I did in elementary school. It was so fun. I also loved the new laser printer there as it printed sooo amazingly crisp prints compared with the previous printer there that was tractor printer. :D (this was early 90s, and Windows 3.x)
Awesome video, Linus! A slight correction: the system font in Windows 95 was a bitmap font called MS Sans Serif (introduced in Windows 3.0 for icon captions), that was rereleased as a TrueType-flavored OpenType font in Windows 2000 called Microsoft Sans Serif.
I really like it when vids like these balance the focus of the topic from the strict "top 10" format, and segue into more educational areas. Good video my man
As a Webdesigner from the early 2000 I always liked Georgia and Verdana for their perfect Pixel-Hinting. After all those years I finally know it's down to the work of a single Person: Thank you Tom Rickner!
I know very, very little about typography, and I stumbled onto this video by accident, but honestly, the way you describe everything and show all the details and quirks is so fascinating, that I watched the whole thing with great interest, did not even notice, that it was almost 50 minutes long. Great work, I'll surely explore the rest of your content.
The thing with these fonts is how their baggage makes them almost bland - you can’t select them to make a statement with the font. Even a incredibly distinct and great font like Impact is stuck as being a default font. This video was great as it allows them the analysis they deserved!
I know you might not want to risk sort of repeating the same things, but I would love to see a video similar to this one for Google fonts. As an amateur web dev, I rely fairly heavily on the service. I also found this video to be really informative and interesting. So I think putting those two things together would be really neat.
Great video, MS' monopolistic practices definitely caused them to be the source of most of our exposure to fonts, just like Google nowadays. My mother was a kindergarten teacher, and Comic Sans was very good for her to use with children due to its proper lowercase 'a' and legibility. Tahoma is my preferred spreadsheet font, and Segoe UI is just ...perfection to me. I use it whenever I can lol.
So true. And, as such, it was admirable to see MS, over the years as the industry spread, demonstrate their cooperative side. To me, it has always been more consumer-concerned than its competition. (😢I so miss my MS phone. It was, by far, easier for me to use than anything else.)
Also, one note on Times New Roman's use as a standard in academia and school: many teachers and profs in my school years (mainly the 2010s) had so little knowledge of different fonts, they basically assumed every serif font as 'Times' and many unassuming sans-serifs as 'Arial'. Most of my "Arial" texts were actually set in Helvetica or Akzidenz-Grotesk, and I even got a Frutiger to pass as Arial.
Segoe UI was actually introduced with Windows Vista. Also, Segoe UI had a slight update in Windows 8, most noticeably affecting I and 1 (which lost their serifs).
Watching this video made me feel like I was back in my first year typography class all over again in the best way possible. Thanks for the great content!!!
Being all serious, I actually do really love Trebuchet because it does remind me of my childhood. I was born in 1994, and so Trebuchet made up a lot of my early computing experience, and I personally think it deserves a decent comeback, especially with Helvetica frigging everywhere. I personally don't like Helvetica. It's one of the blandest fonts, as well as Frutiger. Neither one have much personality. So, as a relatively young graphic designer, I'm going to be advocating for Trebuchet's return.
More history of typography than I ever knew I needed. Thanks for the time and effort put into this video, I know very little about this subject and was looking to learn a bit more.
Thanks for this great video! I learned a lot and having worked with all of those fonts on a daily basis since Windows 3.1, watching it brought back a lot of memories. You didn’t mention Microsoft Comic Chat. It was an IRC client that turned conversations into comic strips in real-time. The font used in the speech bubbles was Comic Sans and while Comic Chat never seem to quite gain much popularity it was an amazing achievement at the time and arguably the best use of Comic Sans.
Hey Doug, MS comic chat sounds really cool. I think I came across a screenshot from it in my research but didn't realize it worked in real time! Thanks for sharing that fun tidbit. 😁
I know it's a niche topic and your channel is fairly new but I can't believe this doesn't have more views, it's incredibly well written and executed! Looking forward to more
Just a note to say thanks very much! I've enjoyed all your videos, but this is the longest-form one I've watched, and I enjoyed every moment of it! Your clarity, precision, overall structuring; your simultaneous threading of technological, artistic, and material histories - all wonderful!
Goodness - I was such a font nerd in high school and loved graphic design. I used to buy those letterform sheets that you rubbed off for setting headlines just to create samples. And way back then I remember when I had my first experiences with a digital typesetting machine. It had no display, so you typed blind, printed a long strip of paper, cut it into line-sized bits, and pasted it up with a waxer. I collected fonts and printed them as full-page specimens to keep in a notebook. This channel is like bacon.
Absolutely fascinating video. I have say that you’re an amazing storyteller; the pace of conveying the story is absolutely amazing - the viewer is not overwhelmed with information, but one can clearly see your attention to detail and genuine interest. I’m hooked and I don’t even have anything to do with design professionally. Great work!
Would you ever consider reviewing some programming / monospace fonts? Ones like Fira Code, Jetbrains mono, operator mono, vulf mono, and so on? I think they pose some unique design challenges and address them in interesting ways
Ubuntu is cool, because it's a font family, which includes a monospace font that fits in with the others. I use Ubuntu font on the Ubuntu desktop when coding. It's my default font in Gedit and VS Code.
This is one of the best videos I’ve ever watched on youtube. Great content, great details, amazing presentation and editing. This was a lot of fun to watch. Thank you for this, sir.
I would love to see a more in-depth look at comic sans and what alternatives are available. Maybe you could do a video on how to design fonts as well, or how we can apply lessons from font design to handwritten documents? What a find this channel is! I was shocked to see how few subscribers you have, given the quality. I look forward to seeing the channel grow. :)
Hearing in the video that Boman had 200 subscribers at the time of uploading this video... to me just discovering him now with over 100K subs... truly a remarkable rise. Well done! As a graphic designer, this was a very interesting topic.
I disagree that all systems listed at 18:14 under “Hinting ignored” ignore hinting entirely. Fontconfig on Linux has four levels of hinting, from none to full. Most Linux desktop environments (as far as I know) have a way to change the level of hinting in the settings.
Please do more longer videos like this! It's really nice to hear you go into so much detail about the whole story. Your channel is so amazing and underrated!
This is the longest video by far, on UA-cam, that I've watched all the way through for some time. Amazing work, thank you for taking the time to put this all together
Two corrections: The explanation of hinting @17:48 shows a comparison of rendering with and without anti-aliasing instead of just hinting. @32:31 the target market of Microsoft Bob was adults who were new to desktop computers; the app suite it came with was productivity focused, with things like a rolodex and currency converter.
I just stumbled across you channel after watching you amazing video on the Olympic's pictograms. Maybe it's your captivating presentation but it took me 20mins to realize how much effort and love you put in the graphics and visual presentation of this video. Also, that's around the time where I noticed that this video is 45mins. Just flew by. Amazing work!
I've seen comic sans used on Diner menus a lot in the past. It's interesting to me in that I feel it's effective in invoking a vibe of like... Homeliness? Something Diners are always trying to invoke right? I think there are cases it can be used well, but those cases have been unfortunately overshadowed in the larger design sphere by it's use in extremely inappropriate situations.
I got to the end of this video, and was blown away by 3 things: 1. that i had watched a 50 minute video without it feeling like 50 minutes (a very good thing) 2. the video was insanely high quality throughout that entire 50 minute period 3. the video only had 20k views. how!!!?? it's practically documentary level quality This is the first video of yours that i've seen but im sure as hell gonna watch all the others after this one
Funny how one of my favorite font is Fira Sans (basically a modern version of FF Meta) and I also love to employ Trebuchet in documents for easy reading. You might have been harsh on Trebuchet but it is actually a very good font for ease of read and being *inclusive to people with dyslexia* since all similar letters have notable differences.
You are an absolute genius, I have to stop your video every few seconds to take in all the information. You rekindled an interest for typography that I have had since I was a little kid snuffling around in my older brothers' Letraset catalogue. Great channel, you have a new subscriber!
Thanks for this great video - I really enjoyed it. I'd certainly be interested to see something about Google's approach to typography. They've introduced me to some very nice fonts, but it feels like they're just throwing stuff at the wall to see what sticks... which is quite Google. But they've done very nice work on some of their own fonts, and I'd like to hear your views on them.
You're dying, barely breathing, as they load you up onto the Comic Sans ambulance. "hah... hahaha... no way they used comic sans..." as you slip into nothingness
I feel like I’ve been blind to all the differences to all these typefaces!! I’d love to see a video on word art and lettering, though they are different from actual typeface designers, it’s very interesting how they influence each other.
Verdana and Tahoma were never the windows system font. That was instead mostly MS Sans Serif for the operating systems you mentioned, before it switched over to Segoe UI with windows Vista. I love this video though and I think your channel is cool!
I came across this video whilst growing UA-cam on a boring Saturday afternoon and found it very enjoyable. I'm an amateur typographer having worked with Macs since 1984, and Laserwriters since 1986 - at one point I could even program in PostScript! When I worked at the BBC I worked with Acorn on the Archimedes which had an OS that only supported anti-aliased fonts. The problem was our displays in those days had resolutions such as 320 x 256 in 256 colours, so these anti-aliased fonts were actually quite hard to read. So for UI use I designed a new font that was specifically designed so that when "anti-aliased" it resulted in either entirely on pixels, or entirely off pixels, in other words not anti-aliased. All the fonts on the Archimedes were named after Cambridge colleges to get round the font names being copyrighted: Trinity for Times, Homerton for Helvetica, Selwyn for Symbol, Corpus for Courier, etc. I called my font after a fictional Cambridge college, Porterhouse. I think your point about democratisation of typography is interesting, but Microsoft are also responsible for making normal "typeset" text look really ugly. If they had put the effort that Adobe put into their type compositing engines, the world of type would look a lot better. I say this having worked on Office with Microsoft in both Redwood and Mountain View and spending many hours arguing about how we should fix the typography. Instead we spent a large amount of effort on strange Japanese typographical requirements.
I actually recently switched to using Trebuchet in my documents and spreadsheets, so it felt very strange when you described it as "dated". It's way more readable at small sizes than Helvetica/Arial or other similar sans serifs-most importantly to me, the capital I, lowercase l, and number 1 are all easy to distinguish from each other. I also just like the look of its spurs and angles, and I personally think its default kerning is really nice. Coincidentally, I also only like Et-styled ampersands. This font might just be perfect for me.
this video was so much more than I understood. it’s historical and technical. he analyzes things from a designers pov. linus you are a madman and a content creating genuis
This was a well thought out video. You make typography sounds so much more interesting. It’s like I’m back in university classes, learning for fun again.
How about a video on all the 60s/70s computer fonts used in sci-fi films and books etc. Such as ‘Computer’ used on the Mantronix LP and the MICR fonts used on the Tomy Blip game. I love that stuff! Thanks.
That's a great idea! Factoid - Adrian Frutiger, mentioned in this video, designed OCR-A which was one of the earliest fonts designed to be read by computers when scanned, which became a stylistic template for much of what we think of as "sci-fi" / "computery" fonts.
I enjoyed this run through all the MSFT fonts. Thanks for mentioning Courier Prime. As a software developer I stuggled to find open fonts that can be programatically embeddable yet are metrically compatible with known fonts. I typically settle for Arimo if I need a sans-serif and Tinos if I need a serif.
Really enjoying these videos, high quality and different from anything else on UA-cam. If you are thinking of more videos on fonts in future can I suggest a video on Jock Kinneir and Margaret Calvert and their rail alphabet and transport fonts. I think that would be very interesting.
Thank you for saying so Craig! That's the hope. :) Yes, I think signage-specific alphabets, including the one you suggested, as well as DIN 1451 and others would make a great video!
Once in a blue moon YT recommends a video I subconsciously craved for... I think last time that happened was 2018. Today it happened with this one. Happily subscribed.
I've subscribed since like 50k or so subs so I got this in my recommended. I was shocked when you said this was a video when you had 200 subscribers - damn. I'm happy that you've grown so much since then so people can finally witness such quality videos.
Late to the party - but now I am subscribed, I can voice my appreciation (as a graphic designer since the 1970's) for this wonderful channel... Articulate and engaging presentations - a fascinating goldmine of information and content. Thanks for the enthusiasm and hard work - not enough grown-up channels to watchout there, so this is one to treasure!
What I found much more interesting about this than Microsoft's influence were the insights into typesetting in general, like the terminology, Monotype-Linotype rivalry, and the digital-print divide. Great video, and I would love for these to be talked about on their own!
Great video, thank you. When I started watching I didn't think I'd still be here nearly 50 minutes later. I feel nostalgic for the fonts which have shaped my computer journey, and reassured at never having understood the difference between Tahoma and Verdana.
Hi Linus! Thank you for such an informative video on fonts and for sharing your research. Although I know little about fonts, I've always had an interest in these things and have fond memories growing up and playing with DTP programs. It's wonderful that someone out there shares the same admiration and interest for fonts! 😍
I enjoyed this video because it's a very niche topic, and the references made are also very niche, but Linus didn't go too deep, presenting alternatives to go dig by yourself. It's a heavy topic, but it was presented in a way that anyone would understand, and stayed on track and on the facts as much as possible. Linus has his own opinions, but they were presented in a non-intrusive manner, via the best/worst/distinct segment, which I found both very organic and respectful. The cards with the samples and info, that conveys a huge amount of pausable data if you want to geek out, but you can ignore it and stay on flow. And the topic itself was well researched and presented in a very digestible way. Thanks Linus, this is a masterclass on fonts, and also a masterclass on documentary making.
0:09 i mean, i saw microsoft in the title, it's kinda hard to think of any company but microsoft when it's obviously related and in the title Love the video btw! wonderfully made!
Microsoft would absolutely be the first company that springs to mind when talking fonts, for me. Microsoft Word was surely a lot of people's introduction to the entire concept of choosing a font?
@@nickwallette6201 nice somment
Microsoft PowerPoint, oh god… I remember trying to make quirky little advertisements for shit aged 7 in PowerPoint, because that was the only program I had. “Buy Bubble Tea!” in Freestyle Script, “Fulton IT Service: Phone Repairs half off” in Magneto, I fancied myself a graphic designer with all these Microsoft fonts on my hands.
Absolutely, not to mention the fact that on most font lists in programs you have a big chunk of fonts that have ms before them
The are the one who control the modern OTF spec now. So yes.
The first company that sprang to my mind was Linotype.
This channel is criminally underrated
where da replies?
I know, I watched a few of his videos, expecting him to have a million subs or so, but after reading this comment, realised that he only has around 25k
Agreed
@@Cosmic_Taco That just happened to me with this comment. His videos are so fascinating.
@@Cosmic_Taco 32K, the algorithm has begun to shift
I can't believe this channel isn't more known. You manage to take niche and technical subjects and make them interesting to listen to. This is a goldmine of content.
Thanks Oliver!
WOW, I didn't look at the sub count before I read your comment, I was expecting it to be a couple million... Not 25 Thousand.
@@CloudPhase 32K one day later, the algorithm smiles on this one
@@hlynur461 Now over 100k!
This is a wonderful video. Thanks!
Thanks mate, I really enjoyed your videos on the UI design of music software. 😁
Did you write this while working on musical typography?
@@somethingfunny9341 I was also wondering if Tantacrul came across this guy during his treble clef troubles haha
didnt expect you here lol
@@y2kona why not? they both are designers and work heavily with fonts
Linus, if you're still reading these comments, I'd love to see your breakdown of some of the so-called "worst" fonts ever used. Stuff like Jokerman, Papyrus, Lobster, etc. They all look pretty ridiculous but seem to get a ton of use
I double this! Add Chiller and Curlz to the mix too..
I like lobster, it isn't that bad
I've seen doctoral theses using Papyrus...
Lobster (the script face) isn't bad. I'm surprised to see it listed. -- I don't get the hate against Papyrus or Comic Sans. Both are fine and the public likes them a lot. I wish Papyrus had a bold and an extra bold weight. Comic Sans is quirky but casual and friendly. People _like_ it. A lot. This says something, regardless of any complaints designers and typographers may have. Are they overused? Yes. But so is Helvetica (and Arial). I had to use Helvetica so much that I now try to avoid it as much as possible, yet it's neutral and legible, except for a few things like the cap I / lowercase L, and a few other things. (I could go down a list.) -- The default fonts for the web and desktop almost all have some issues, whether they are legacy designs centuries old or newly made especially for on-screen. -- Why does Georgia have non-lining figures at the default, instead of lining? it would've been so much more usable. Other oddities like that. (Trebuchet is interesting and legible. I still like Candara but again, I don't like non-lining figures.) -- There are some great fonts, new and old, out there, and as designers or typographers, we need to understand why the public likes some fonts we might not like; why they think those look good or are more readable or distinctive. We also need to use what's out there and explore. -- I remember the "old days" when the LaserWriter was new and those 35 included fonts were what you had to work with, plus whatever else you could afford, and Adobe and only a few others were the computer font vendors / foundries. Then the web came along, but you had no way to put good-looking or eye-catching fonts on web pages except through (ugh) turning them into graphics (which Word stupidly still does too often). Then we bot web fonts, but with limited usability because the big companies made it hard to include them for rights issues. We've had some better alternatives in some cases, and in rights-free, open fonts, but then the rights for web fonts for those became a problem too, and at least one major provider, if you are offline, boom, your web fonts do not work at all, because they want to check with bigbrther to see if they're legal, when you bought and paid for the rights to use them! So we still have hurdles to go through, even though there's much good out there too.
@@benw9949 you wrote a whole MONSTER of a paragraph on fonts
love love love how you don’t shy away from using industry terms but also take the time to define them, makes it enjoyable as someone who knows a little about typography and knows very little about typography :D
Speaking as someone with Dyslexia, Comic Sans is the single most readable font I have ever, ever used. Considering it was originally designed for use in a children’s game, it’s incredible readability at all coherent sizes makes total sense.
What it comes down to so far as I can tell, is that each character is a genuinely unique shape; there is no visual confusion at all. An ‘I’ does not masquerade as an ‘l’, which always annoys me with more “palatable” modern fonts.
I would not have been able to get through high school or college without my buddy Comic Sans, and I think there’s a discussion to be had about ableism in type fonts, the infantilization of the disabled, and it’s correlation with Comic Sans hate. For me, it’s the best type font that’s ever existed, and I’m glad to have it.
Absolutely amazing channel; so glad I subscribed!!!
Verdana also has a clever solution to the I and l problem. It uses a serifed I, which is not used elsewhere.
". An ‘I’ does not masquerade as an ‘l’, which always annoys me with more “palatable” modern fonts. "
I'm not dyslexic but that pisses me off too, especially since it's so easy to fix. It's like it was designed stupid on purpose.
@@isodoublet yeah, even most programmer fonts can distinguish them and still look fine so like, i don't get why regular fonts can't just add a few little bits to distinguish them better
@@dustinm2717 My favorite programming font is Source Code Pro for that reason. There's no way to confuse 1, l and I because they all look quite different. It's aesthetically pleasing too so yeah.
yooo check his latest vid! on the accessible readible font he worked on
You absolutely did not talk way too long about fonts! I know I am late to the party viewing this video, and you probably won’t even see this comment, but I found this video completely and utterly fascinating. I can’t imagine the huge amount of research that went into it. I really enjoyed how deep you got into the weeds of each font’s particular design features and the intricate history behind them all. Excellent in every way. I am enjoying your other content too. Keep up the great work!
I'm late too... and utterly enraptured. 👊🏼
"It might be more exciting to talk about the automotive design of a rare Ferrari or a Bugatti, but if you want to learn about the design that impacts the average person's experience, there's a lot more to be gleaned from looking at a Toyota Camry" - this line absolutely sums up what design for the public is all about! Thanks for bringing this out, a real gem this video!
29 minutes into this video and realizing I can't believe how interesting I've found it
I thought I would've already left the video too but I actually do connect with his videos quite well!
I honestly love good fonts and typesetting. As well as open source projects that make documents/typeset for people for free, like LaTeX or groff
oh, I would love a world without adobe. they've single-handedly gimped all competition in their niche with restrictive and overreaching patent-trolling.
I see what you did there
also they're expensive as all f*ck and don't give student licenses
Adobe is the only company i am completely fine with pirating from, until they wanna stop patenting what could be basic features (but aren't because adobe patented them) then screw them they don't deserve our money
-also patents kinda suck in general tbh-
@@dustinm2717 based.
all my homies hate intellectual property!
You don’t actually work in the graphics field, do you? What competition was there for Photoshop in 1994? Nothing. Lol
And still, you better know if if you’re going to work in the field. Same with Illustrator and InDesign.
I’ve been using Photoshop professionally since version 2.5.
I know this is an old video but since I’m watching it, might be worth saying anyway. I wrote a post on r/dyslexia about this…
Please. If you produce materials for dyslexic people, *do not* just make it in Comic Sans cuz you heard it’s better, likely from someone who isn’t dyslexic. This also applies to those specific dyslexia friendly fonts too. The weird weighting, *may* help someone, but it may make it harder to read for another.
Dyslexics are people, and they each need specialised accommodations for their learning difficulty. Ask them, please don’t dictate a font you *think* might work better.
This, exactly. As someone with (admittedly fairly mild) dyslexia, I do die a little inside whenever I see comic sans even when it’s been put there to supposedly help me. Other typefaces work
@@EdJonesVideos I think no one on this planet earth likes Comic Sans tbh
@@Dyto69 Timmy (now age 7) does!
Yes this
What about Lexend?
You're one of the very, very few English-speaking people I can watch without subtitles with zero problems. You make me feel like my English is better than it probably is. Congratulations on your clarity of speech. I mean, sometimes I even use subtitles on Spanish people speaking Spanish because their accent is different than mine. Kudos!
Linus Boman clearly treats communication seriously and has a wonderful accent that synthesizes Australian, English and American to excellent effect. If only the rest of our colinguals would feel the inspiration.
This Australian accent is from the south of Australia, he's probably from Melbourne and so were his parents, all well educated. These are the good sounding Australians. Not like people from the north of Australia who sound like Steve Irwin rejects, for example, me 😅
@@JamieBainbridge I believe Linus mentioned in one of his videos that he's Swedish.
bleh
Me: I don't have enough attention span to watch a 20 minute long episode of a show!
Also me: *watches a 48 minute long video about FONTS in one go*
Some UA-camrs will do that to you. I never know what the next jan Misali video will be about, for example, but I know I'll watch it.
bleh
I subscribed immediately once I saw that business card font explanation. I’m loving your channel, please do a “your business card is crap“ video! Thank you so much keep up the good work.
I'll always have a special place in my heart for Verdana, which I decided as a budding child webmaster in the early 2000s was absolutely the best-looking option of the common web fonts. Still a big fan
super relatable, but for me it was 10pt tahoma 🥰
Thank you Linus, these are impeccably produced. I'd be greatly interested in a WordArt video. I can't be the only one who messed around with those awful presets in PowerPoint as a child, like one might with Paint.
Thanks hecticvexed - yes, that's definitely why it appeals to me as a topic! It's amazing what held our attention as kids in the 90s before the internet, eh? 😄
I spent hours making my own perfect wordart settings around 2011-2012
WordArt was my introduction to the concept of typography.
@@LinusBoman I remember making one FULL page worth of wordart title (yup, one big wordart and only that for the first page) for the works I did in elementary school. It was so fun. I also loved the new laser printer there as it printed sooo amazingly crisp prints compared with the previous printer there that was tractor printer. :D (this was early 90s, and Windows 3.x)
Awesome video, Linus! A slight correction: the system font in Windows 95 was a bitmap font called MS Sans Serif (introduced in Windows 3.0 for icon captions), that was rereleased as a TrueType-flavored OpenType font in Windows 2000 called Microsoft Sans Serif.
Cheers Arthur!
I really like it when vids like these balance the focus of the topic from the strict "top 10" format, and segue into more educational areas. Good video my man
As a Webdesigner from the early 2000 I always liked Georgia and Verdana for their perfect Pixel-Hinting. After all those years I finally know it's down to the work of a single Person: Thank you Tom Rickner!
I know very, very little about typography, and I stumbled onto this video by accident, but honestly, the way you describe everything and show all the details and quirks is so fascinating, that I watched the whole thing with great interest, did not even notice, that it was almost 50 minutes long. Great work, I'll surely explore the rest of your content.
The thing with these fonts is how their baggage makes them almost bland - you can’t select them to make a statement with the font. Even a incredibly distinct and great font like Impact is stuck as being a default font.
This video was great as it allows them the analysis they deserved!
22:36 love the use of the spelling of defence in the scottish original type and defense in the american one here. fun detail
That said, Matthew Carter is English.
I know you might not want to risk sort of repeating the same things, but I would love to see a video similar to this one for Google fonts. As an amateur web dev, I rely fairly heavily on the service. I also found this video to be really informative and interesting. So I think putting those two things together would be really neat.
Cheers Rob, definitely will take a look at Google Fonts in the future!
Lobster, Lobster was everywhere.
Also Montserrat must be in like top 10 of most used Google Fonts, because it's basically Gotham but free.
Great video, MS' monopolistic practices definitely caused them to be the source of most of our exposure to fonts, just like Google nowadays. My mother was a kindergarten teacher, and Comic Sans was very good for her to use with children due to its proper lowercase 'a' and legibility. Tahoma is my preferred spreadsheet font, and Segoe UI is just ...perfection to me. I use it whenever I can lol.
So true. And, as such, it was admirable to see MS, over the years as the industry spread, demonstrate their cooperative side. To me, it has always been more consumer-concerned than its competition.
(😢I so miss my MS phone. It was, by far, easier for me to use than anything else.)
Fantastic video. I went from boredom and not knowing what to do to sit still and watch a 40 minute video about fonts. It was genuinely engaging.
Oh, I'd love to see you talk about WordArt!
and yet he never did
YES! THIS!
I love the tone with which you approach your topics. Best typography videos out there!!
Thanks Dario, great to hear you're enjoying these videos!
Also, one note on Times New Roman's use as a standard in academia and school: many teachers and profs in my school years (mainly the 2010s) had so little knowledge of different fonts, they basically assumed every serif font as 'Times' and many unassuming sans-serifs as 'Arial'. Most of my "Arial" texts were actually set in Helvetica or Akzidenz-Grotesk, and I even got a Frutiger to pass as Arial.
27:15 that question mark looks exactly like a G Clamp often used in metalworking, reminiscent of the font's origin. FANTASTIC
google g clamp if you need a reference
Segoe UI was actually introduced with Windows Vista. Also, Segoe UI had a slight update in Windows 8, most noticeably affecting I and 1 (which lost their serifs).
Watching this video made me feel like I was back in my first year typography class all over again in the best way possible. Thanks for the great content!!!
The word Helvetica switching to the font Comic Sans for a split second at 34:59 bothered me in a way I didn't think was possible.
I had to read every comment to find out if I was the only one to spot this too.
Being all serious, I actually do really love Trebuchet because it does remind me of my childhood. I was born in 1994, and so Trebuchet made up a lot of my early computing experience, and I personally think it deserves a decent comeback, especially with Helvetica frigging everywhere. I personally don't like Helvetica. It's one of the blandest fonts, as well as Frutiger. Neither one have much personality. So, as a relatively young graphic designer, I'm going to be advocating for Trebuchet's return.
This video is spectacular, continue to make great videos about what you love. We’re here. 👍🏾
More history of typography than I ever knew I needed. Thanks for the time and effort put into this video, I know very little about this subject and was looking to learn a bit more.
Thanks for this great video! I learned a lot and having worked with all of those fonts on a daily basis since Windows 3.1, watching it brought back a lot of memories.
You didn’t mention Microsoft Comic Chat. It was an IRC client that turned conversations into comic strips in real-time. The font used in the speech bubbles was Comic Sans and while Comic Chat never seem to quite gain much popularity it was an amazing achievement at the time and arguably the best use of Comic Sans.
Hey Doug, MS comic chat sounds really cool. I think I came across a screenshot from it in my research but didn't realize it worked in real time! Thanks for sharing that fun tidbit. 😁
I know it's a niche topic and your channel is fairly new but I can't believe this doesn't have more views, it's incredibly well written and executed! Looking forward to more
Despite this being an oddly interesting topic, your presentation of it is truly what makes this so watchable!
Just popping back to express my sadness that this channel hasn't found its audience yet. You do good work.
Just a note to say thanks very much! I've enjoyed all your videos, but this is the longest-form one I've watched, and I enjoyed every moment of it! Your clarity, precision, overall structuring; your simultaneous threading of technological, artistic, and material histories - all wonderful!
Thanks James, kind of you to say!
Goodness - I was such a font nerd in high school and loved graphic design. I used to buy those letterform sheets that you rubbed off for setting headlines just to create samples. And way back then I remember when I had my first experiences with a digital typesetting machine. It had no display, so you typed blind, printed a long strip of paper, cut it into line-sized bits, and pasted it up with a waxer.
I collected fonts and printed them as full-page specimens to keep in a notebook.
This channel is like bacon.
Absolutely fascinating video.
I have say that you’re an amazing storyteller; the pace of conveying the story is absolutely amazing - the viewer is not overwhelmed with information, but one can clearly see your attention to detail and genuine interest. I’m hooked and I don’t even have anything to do with design professionally. Great work!
I didn't know a video about fonts could be that entertaining, nice
Would you ever consider reviewing some programming / monospace fonts? Ones like Fira Code, Jetbrains mono, operator mono, vulf mono, and so on? I think they pose some unique design challenges and address them in interesting ways
Yeah, I think a video on monospaced fonts is a good idea too.
Ubuntu is cool, because it's a font family, which includes a monospace font that fits in with the others. I use Ubuntu font on the Ubuntu desktop when coding. It's my default font in Gedit and VS Code.
This is one of the best videos I’ve ever watched on youtube. Great content, great details, amazing presentation and editing. This was a lot of fun to watch. Thank you for this, sir.
I would love to see a more in-depth look at comic sans and what alternatives are available. Maybe you could do a video on how to design fonts as well, or how we can apply lessons from font design to handwritten documents?
What a find this channel is! I was shocked to see how few subscribers you have, given the quality. I look forward to seeing the channel grow. :)
Hearing in the video that Boman had 200 subscribers at the time of uploading this video... to me just discovering him now with over 100K subs... truly a remarkable rise. Well done! As a graphic designer, this was a very interesting topic.
I disagree that all systems listed at 18:14 under “Hinting ignored” ignore hinting entirely. Fontconfig on Linux has four levels of hinting, from none to full. Most Linux desktop environments (as far as I know) have a way to change the level of hinting in the settings.
"i disagree" attacks me 💀
True + certain fonts clearly are hinted better than others. Hinting may not matter much on 4k but anything lower, I can definitely see the difference.
Please do more longer videos like this! It's really nice to hear you go into so much detail about the whole story. Your channel is so amazing and underrated!
Really engaging video on a topic that effects so many people, really great stuff!
This is the longest video by far, on UA-cam, that I've watched all the way through for some time. Amazing work, thank you for taking the time to put this all together
Two corrections:
The explanation of hinting @17:48 shows a comparison of rendering with and without anti-aliasing instead of just hinting.
@32:31 the target market of Microsoft Bob was adults who were new to desktop computers; the app suite it came with was productivity focused, with things like a rolodex and currency converter.
I just stumbled across you channel after watching you amazing video on the Olympic's pictograms. Maybe it's your captivating presentation but it took me 20mins to realize how much effort and love you put in the graphics and visual presentation of this video. Also, that's around the time where I noticed that this video is 45mins. Just flew by. Amazing work!
I've seen comic sans used on Diner menus a lot in the past. It's interesting to me in that I feel it's effective in invoking a vibe of like... Homeliness? Something Diners are always trying to invoke right? I think there are cases it can be used well, but those cases have been unfortunately overshadowed in the larger design sphere by it's use in extremely inappropriate situations.
I got to the end of this video, and was blown away by 3 things:
1. that i had watched a 50 minute video without it feeling like 50 minutes (a very good thing)
2. the video was insanely high quality throughout that entire 50 minute period
3. the video only had 20k views. how!!!?? it's practically documentary level quality
This is the first video of yours that i've seen but im sure as hell gonna watch all the others after this one
Funny how one of my favorite font is Fira Sans (basically a modern version of FF Meta) and I also love to employ Trebuchet in documents for easy reading.
You might have been harsh on Trebuchet but it is actually a very good font for ease of read and being *inclusive to people with dyslexia* since all similar letters have notable differences.
You are an absolute genius, I have to stop your video every few seconds to take in all the information. You rekindled an interest for typography that I have had since I was a little kid snuffling around in my older brothers' Letraset catalogue. Great channel, you have a new subscriber!
Thanks for this great video - I really enjoyed it.
I'd certainly be interested to see something about Google's approach to typography. They've introduced me to some very nice fonts, but it feels like they're just throwing stuff at the wall to see what sticks... which is quite Google. But they've done very nice work on some of their own fonts, and I'd like to hear your views on them.
Just found your channel and binging my way through your old videos. What can I say, amazing work, love it all. Good to be here before you explode!
You're dying, barely breathing, as they load you up onto the Comic Sans ambulance. "hah... hahaha... no way they used comic sans..." as you slip into nothingness
Whoaaaah from 200 subscribers to 150k!!! You deserve it dude! Amazing work and time and production put in.
I feel like I’ve been blind to all the differences to all these typefaces!! I’d love to see a video on word art and lettering, though they are different from actual typeface designers, it’s very interesting how they influence each other.
You can't tease us with the possibility of a word art video and not do it.. These videos satisfy my nerdy cravings! They're amazing, keep it up man!
Verdana and Tahoma were never the windows system font. That was instead mostly MS Sans Serif for the operating systems you mentioned, before it switched over to Segoe UI with windows Vista. I love this video though and I think your channel is cool!
I came across this video whilst growing UA-cam on a boring Saturday afternoon and found it very enjoyable. I'm an amateur typographer having worked with Macs since 1984, and Laserwriters since 1986 - at one point I could even program in PostScript! When I worked at the BBC I worked with Acorn on the Archimedes which had an OS that only supported anti-aliased fonts. The problem was our displays in those days had resolutions such as 320 x 256 in 256 colours, so these anti-aliased fonts were actually quite hard to read. So for UI use I designed a new font that was specifically designed so that when "anti-aliased" it resulted in either entirely on pixels, or entirely off pixels, in other words not anti-aliased. All the fonts on the Archimedes were named after Cambridge colleges to get round the font names being copyrighted: Trinity for Times, Homerton for Helvetica, Selwyn for Symbol, Corpus for Courier, etc. I called my font after a fictional Cambridge college, Porterhouse.
I think your point about democratisation of typography is interesting, but Microsoft are also responsible for making normal "typeset" text look really ugly. If they had put the effort that Adobe put into their type compositing engines, the world of type would look a lot better. I say this having worked on Office with Microsoft in both Redwood and Mountain View and spending many hours arguing about how we should fix the typography. Instead we spent a large amount of effort on strange Japanese typographical requirements.
This was very well done, thank you. I would be interested in seeing the apple fonts, especially the orders ones that I recall being pretty quirky.
I never knew I needed Linus Type Tips 💕
Kidding aside your channel deserves more sub!! I got here via recommendations :)
I actually recently switched to using Trebuchet in my documents and spreadsheets, so it felt very strange when you described it as "dated". It's way more readable at small sizes than Helvetica/Arial or other similar sans serifs-most importantly to me, the capital I, lowercase l, and number 1 are all easy to distinguish from each other. I also just like the look of its spurs and angles, and I personally think its default kerning is really nice.
Coincidentally, I also only like Et-styled ampersands. This font might just be perfect for me.
this video was so much more than I understood. it’s historical and technical. he analyzes things from a designers pov. linus you are a madman and a content creating genuis
Oh Trebuchet, you were my default AIM font for many years.
This was a well thought out video. You make typography sounds so much more interesting. It’s like I’m back in university classes, learning for fun again.
Hey Linus. What’s your mic? It sounds great.
Thanks Jason - I use the Rode NT-USB mic.
Man just found your channel. You have great vibez and are such a great story teller! I would like to see your books :D
How about a video on all the 60s/70s computer fonts used in sci-fi films and books etc. Such as ‘Computer’ used on the Mantronix LP and the MICR fonts used on the Tomy Blip game. I love that stuff! Thanks.
That's a great idea! Factoid - Adrian Frutiger, mentioned in this video, designed OCR-A which was one of the earliest fonts designed to be read by computers when scanned, which became a stylistic template for much of what we think of as "sci-fi" / "computery" fonts.
I enjoyed this run through all the MSFT fonts. Thanks for mentioning Courier Prime. As a software developer I stuggled to find open fonts that can be programatically embeddable yet are metrically compatible with known fonts. I typically settle for Arimo if I need a sans-serif and Tinos if I need a serif.
Definitely like to see a Google version of this!
Your microphone is crisp and this whole channel is underrated
This is a great video, but Segoe UI debuted not in Windows 7 but Windows Vista. If you've ever used Windows Vista, you would have known.
Your videos are a godsend for someone like me who works in design but didn't officially go to school for it. And they're fun! Thank you!!
Really enjoying these videos, high quality and different from anything else on UA-cam.
If you are thinking of more videos on fonts in future can I suggest a video on Jock Kinneir and Margaret Calvert and their rail alphabet and transport fonts. I think that would be very interesting.
Thank you for saying so Craig! That's the hope. :)
Yes, I think signage-specific alphabets, including the one you suggested, as well as DIN 1451 and others would make a great video!
Once in a blue moon YT recommends a video I subconsciously craved for... I think last time that happened was 2018. Today it happened with this one. Happily subscribed.
34:59 Comic sans, you can't miss it even if it's there for only a frame.
He Tyler Durden'd us.
I've subscribed since like 50k or so subs so I got this in my recommended. I was shocked when you said this was a video when you had 200 subscribers - damn. I'm happy that you've grown so much since then so people can finally witness such quality videos.
I can’t believe this video only has 15k views you deserve more
Late to the party - but now I am subscribed, I can voice my appreciation (as a graphic designer since the 1970's) for this wonderful channel...
Articulate and engaging presentations - a fascinating goldmine of information and content.
Thanks for the enthusiasm and hard work - not enough grown-up channels to watchout there, so this is one to treasure!
Amazing video! Really well thought out and put together. Your hard work here is bound to pay off. Sharing your video to whoever I think will like it!
Thank you Sam, that's kind to say. Glad to hear it! :)
You're really fantastic at presenting. Great voice and style. Helps that I love fonts too! Great work 👏
There is no way I imagined a 48min video about fonts would hold my attend. But yeah. It did. Thanks Linus.
Brilliant! Clear, informative and engaging presentation of a subject that touches us every day, without us barely noticing it most of the time.
Came across your channel and subscribed via a recommended video (this one). Seriously, you deserve wayyyy more subscribers.
What I found much more interesting about this than Microsoft's influence were the insights into typesetting in general, like the terminology, Monotype-Linotype rivalry, and the digital-print divide. Great video, and I would love for these to be talked about on their own!
Great video, thank you. When I started watching I didn't think I'd still be here nearly 50 minutes later. I feel nostalgic for the fonts which have shaped my computer journey, and reassured at never having understood the difference between Tahoma and Verdana.
Thanks for the great captions! I’ve never looked so hard at what the captions look like while watching a video 😂
This channel is a gold mine
Hi Linus! Thank you for such an informative video on fonts and for sharing your research. Although I know little about fonts, I've always had an interest in these things and have fond memories growing up and playing with DTP programs. It's wonderful that someone out there shares the same admiration and interest for fonts! 😍
I enjoyed this video because it's a very niche topic, and the references made are also very niche, but Linus didn't go too deep, presenting alternatives to go dig by yourself. It's a heavy topic, but it was presented in a way that anyone would understand, and stayed on track and on the facts as much as possible. Linus has his own opinions, but they were presented in a non-intrusive manner, via the best/worst/distinct segment, which I found both very organic and respectful. The cards with the samples and info, that conveys a huge amount of pausable data if you want to geek out, but you can ignore it and stay on flow. And the topic itself was well researched and presented in a very digestible way. Thanks Linus, this is a masterclass on fonts, and also a masterclass on documentary making.
the editing in this video blew me away and the info is really bloody interesting. great channel! can't wait to see more from here
0:09 i mean, i saw microsoft in the title, it's kinda hard to think of any company but microsoft when it's obviously related and in the title
Love the video btw! wonderfully made!
Well now I have two Linuses in my subscription list. Great videos mate.