over 8 years ago from Nirzar P, Designer
Apple released WatchKit today, with the WatchKit design guidelines the new font is being distributed.
http://i.imgur.com/laxcc0q.png
The typeface is called San Francisco Display and it comes in 9 weights.
According to license agreement, it can be only used with Apple Products.
You can check it out here -https://developer.apple.com/watchkit/
Feels like a missed opportunity for Sans Francisco.
"Guys, where did Francisco go?"
Where did Francisgo?
That is STRONG. Nice work.
I'm awed by your avatar.
I'm bad at pixel art, so my natural assumption is that you are in awe of it's shittiness, but thanks!
Bad?! What are you talking about :D Bad is my lame cat avatar.
I'll make you feel better. Bad is MY lame cat avatar.
Cat.
~high five!~
I logged in to upvote this. I never login.
I logged in to upvote this. I never login, but then I saw that you also never login, but logged in to upvote this.
I, someone who never logs in, logged in, having seen that you, never logging in, logged in, having seen that they, never logging in, logged in to upvote this, to upvote this. Having logged in, I upvoted this, them, and you. <3
pretty big update to the original San Francisco font. 
Haha, you don't say :P
Has anybody tried replacing Helvetica with this in OS X Yosemite yet?
"you may use the Apple Font solely for purposes of design and development of applications for the Apple Watch."
Breaking the License Agreement already lol, not that i actually care. Pretty specific usage restrictions.
I meant old San Francisco haha
Now that i want to see lol
Telling comparison of San Francisco and Roboto:
Both are heavily influenced by DIN right?
Definitely, but the Roboto vs San Francisco match seems a bit too close for comfort.
How come?
Edit: explanation why I'm probing for more as I was probably flagged as a troll but the original commenter :-p
Google and Apple are using house fonts that are heavily based on DIN, probably because DIN fits a lot of the criteria the companies took into consideration when picking a starting point for a watch (contextual constraints like various lighting situations, distance of read, likely screen pixel density, etc).
In Google's case it has been tweaked to be used on a variety of devices down to the very small (watch). In Apple's case, they made this font to be used on the watch only, as far as we know so far.
Based on that assumption, I think both companies have done a great job for the user by designing a font that meets all of the criteria that have set out to meet, instead of differentiating for the sake of differentiation on a 'brand' level.
Speaking of the 'brand' thing, it's also the case that Google's guidelines call for bright, colorful and 'light' feeling backings for text (on Android Wear most notification text would be a dark gray, per their guidelines). For the Apple Watch, it's almost all white on black. The two brands couldn't look much more... um... black and white... next to each other.
I think the users win here. No matter which watch you pick (or both!) you're getting something thoughtfully considered from the designers.
If you overlaid any DIN style font at 18pts it's going to match within 10px as well. Not very close. Though I do think the font looks more android like.
It's more like Apple's original Mac OS 7 font.
First of all, that format is going to make MOST sans-serifs look like they're ripping each other off... 12px black on red? Of course our eye is going to blend the two fonts into a single set of letters and tell us they are the same. For the purposes of comparison, this image is useless.
Secondly, sans serifs designed for readability on small screens SHOULD look the same. That doesn't mean they were designed based on each other, or that one was a starting block for another. It seems likely that similar user research would lead to similar fonts when both are trying to do the same thing.
Thirdly, font design is all about the tiny details. Sure, any idiot with Illustrator could make Roboto slightly more squat, but it takes a long time to make all the details right. I'm sure both Roboto and San Francisco were poured over for ages to make the details right, and this comparison doesn't do justice to those details in the slightest.
This is a fairly standard and well-accepted method for comparing typefaces. I disagree that it's obvious that your "eye is going to blend the two fonts into a single set of letters..."
Why should sans serifs designed for readability on small screens look the same? One can easily see why any two would be similar, but it's not true that all must be.
I don't think the JMD's intention was to say that San Francisco was based off Roboto. He was merely pointing out how similar they are, which makes sense given that they took inspiration from a couple of the same faces.
Furthermore, there wasn't any implication that Apple didn't put time and care into developing the San Francisco.
Download Apples new typeface! :D
It can only be used for Apple :/
So DIN SCHRIFTEN was originally used for signs in Germany, no?
Roboto is used for Robots, obviously.
San Francisco - only people in SF can use the Apple Watch!
I tried using it as a system font on Yosemite. It looks pretty good! But it has the same issues that other replaced fonts have. The descenders being cut off in Spotlight is the most glaring of these. Don't know if I'll keep it, but I certainly hope San Francisco makes its way to iOS and Mac by whatever we see at WWDC next year.
If anyone wants to give it a shot, here's a link to the files. Just place them in "~/Library/ Fonts" and reboot.
I'd love to see a screenshot!
No problem. Let me know if there's anything in particular you'd like to see.
http://i.imgur.com/j1JHGt1.pnghttp://i.imgur.com/Ys9uq4i.pnghttp://i.imgur.com/q5fT9qp.pnghttp://i.imgur.com/js7AUte.png
Beyond just placing them in the 'Fonts' folder, what do I need to do to use them as the system font? Personally I'd like to try some others out…
Really a shame about the descenders, this is a great UI font. Even on non-retina displays it's very readable, especially the heavier weights as seen on desktop icon labels, etc.
Some interesting glitches with it, first time changing the system font on Yosemite so I'm not sure if that's a glitch common to all alternative fonts.
According to license agreement, it can be only used with Apple Products.
lol.
It seems that Apple removed it from the website, here is a link to the font + PSD files they published previously http://cl.ly/1H462Q2X1N45
This is awesome! Does anyone have a mirror link to download the font yet?
Edit: I totally missed it. Someone already posted a download link on the main page. Here it is incase anyone missed it:
Hi, Can the San Francisco font be used for app designing for iphone as well ? iOS 8..
Just to clarify a little, the typeface is called San Francisco and there are two variants:
"Choose the San Francisco Text font for text that is 19 points or smaller. Choose the San Francisco Display font for text that is 20 points or larger."
SF is clearly more DIN-inspired than Roboto, which I think has more connections to News Gothic. Details set Roboto and SF even further apart, especially the capital /G. The small /a and /e are also more well done than Roboto, despite its V2 fixes.
And, I don’t know if Roboto has built this in, but SF has taken it to the nuances of optical sizing. Helvetica for Yosemite is definitely a mishap, but I think the typographic guys at Apple has done a decent enough job. Of course this is merely judging from letterforms and there are definitely the technological aspects Apple has to deal with before Apple Watch goes out.
This typefaces looks like a bloated Helvetica variant. Right?
only new font style? not the user interface...
The design guidelines comes with PSDs for common templates used on Apple Watch. Font family is part of the whole thing.
Anyone replace Helvetica in Yosemite with this yet?
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