Typographica

typographica.org · Group blog · on HN since 2011

Typographica is a long-running journal of type design that publishes typeface reviews, book reviews, and commentary on typography.

What HN saysHN links it for typeface reviews such as Chartwell and Fira Sans, and commenters list it among the design blogs they follow.
36HN people shared it
17linked it in comments
25stories submitted
224story points
4 months agolast shared
2011people per year2026

Most-shared posts

  1. 1
    Chartwell
    4 people · first shared 2017
  2. 2
  3. 3
    Typographica. Type Reviews, Books, Commentary.
    3 people · 1 points · first shared 2011 · discussion on HN
  4. 4
    Roboto typeface is a four headed frankenstein
    3 people · first shared 2012
  5. 5
    Beyond Helvetica: The Real Story Behind Fonts in iOS 7
    2 people · 79 points · first shared 2013 · 52 comments on HN
  6. 6
    Roboto is a Four-headed Frankenfont
    2 people · 7 points · first shared 2011 · discussion on HN
  7. 7
  8. 8
  9. 9
    Our Favorite Typefaces of 2012
    1 people · 71 points · first shared 2013 · 21 comments on HN
  10. 10
    Variable Fonts: The Future of Web Type (2016)
    1 people · 28 points · first shared 2019 · 9 comments on HN
  11. 11
  12. 12
    Our Favorite Typefaces of 2015
    1 people · 4 points · first shared 2016 · discussion on HN
  13. 13
    Our Favorite Typefaces of 2014
    1 people · 3 points · first shared 2015 · discussion on HN
  14. 14
    Notable typefaces of 2011
    1 people · 2 points · first shared 2012 · discussion on HN
  15. 15
    ALS Lamon Typeface Review
    1 people · 2 points · first shared 2025 · discussion on HN

What HN people wrote when they linked it

aa-jv · 2026-04-23
This is a great idea and I concur with your line of thought - there is room for expression in the realm of number representations .. have you considered building an ImHex plugin that would illustrate your point? The use of octants is particularly intriguing .. One thing I often ponder on, along similar lines, is whether I can write some clever plugin that would put FF ChartWell - a font which uses ligatures to render useful graphs out of boring numerical data - into use, within ImHex. Seen how ligatures can be used this way? https://typographica.org/typeface-reviews/chartwell/ Your idea of discovering new means of representing numeral data put me in mind of ligature hacking, in any case ...
mmjaa · 2018-05-08
Shades of FF Chartwell, which is one of those amazing things you just think to yourself "well, this is going to take over the world of design and GUI's and so on", only .. for some reason, it doesn't: https://typographica.org/typeface-reviews/chartwell/ "FF Chartwell is a set of three fonts* that together create a remarkable set of tools for creating bar, line, and pie charts. It uses OpenType ligatures to perform its magic – a series of numbers can be transformed into clean, perfectly rendered graphs, as you type." Having used Chartwell for a few projects, I'm fairly convinced that this ligature trick is the way all GUI's should be done. In fact I've got this hypothesis going, that every GUI toolkit/method is eventually just going to re-invent ligatures and type... ;)
edwintorok · 2014-05-24
Fira Sans is also one of the 3 free fonts (along with Charter and Source Code Pro) recommended by Butterick's Practical Typography: http://practicaltypography.com/ It is also used in Racket's documentation: http://typographica.org/typeface-reviews/fira-sans/ And here is how I use it in LaTeX: % Font settings \usepackage[T1]{fontenc} % Serif body font \usepackage{charter} % Math font \usepackage[charter]{mathdesign} % Monospaced font \usepackage{sourcecodepro} % Sans-serif font \usepackage[lf]{FiraSans}
Samuel_Michon · 2012-12-26
Wow, with the exception of Adobe’s Source Code, those fonts are pretty dreadful. I’d say they’re worth exactly the price their creators are asking for it. For lists of good new webfonts, try MyFonts’ monthly ‘Rising Stars’ newsletter: http://webfonts.info/webfonts-know-how/november-rising-stars-webfonts Also, Typographica makes an superb list every January: http://typographica.org/features/our-favorite-typefaces-of-2011/ And for some inspiration, you can always check the most popular fonts at TypeKit: https://typekit.com/lists/favorite-fonts
Ethan_Barry · 2024-06-11
You got it! By approximate category and in no particular order: ## MISCELLANEOUS - [Low Tech Magazine](https://solar.lowtechmagazine.com), a solar-powered website showcasing the amazing low-tech things you can do with a little ingenuity, - [Stephen Wolfram's Blog](https://writings.stephenwolfram.com) on math, compsci, and everything else, - [Cool Macrophotography](https://www.barrywebbimages.co.uk/Images/Macro/Slime-Moulds-Myxomycete… for amazing pictures of tiny things (WARNING: Time Sink!), ## COMPUTER SCIENCE - [While-True-Do](https://blog.while-true-do.io) has lots of stuff on Linux administration and self-hosting, - [Backend Banter](https://www.backendbanter.fm) for a great podcast on backend development, - [Two Wrongs](https://two-wrongs.com) for statistics and functional programming, - [Math ∩ Programming](https://www.jeremykun.com/) where math and programming intersect! Written by a Googler... - [Paul Bourke's site](https://paulbourke.net/) where you can get happily lost exploring old pages on every topic CS touches, - [Jason Punyon's blog](https://jasonpunyon.com) for some fun algorithms and things, - [Yossi Kreinin's blog](https://yosefk.com/blog) for C, Python, and plenty of non-technical topics, - [Adrian Sampson's academic blog](https://www.cs.cornell.edu/~asampson/blog) for an academic's perspective, - [Cool polyhedra viewer project](https://georgehart.com/virtual-polyhedra/vp.html) if you like geometry, - [Another academic blog on…
tiffanyh · 2025-04-05
Very cool, but … I don’t understand how the ligature knows to generate a Vertical Bar vs Bar vs Pie Chart since there no identifier to specific which to use. https://typographica.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/ff-chartwell-fonts…
cjs_ac · 2025-04-05
There has also been a commercial offering in this space for a while: FF Chartwell (https://typographica.org/typeface-reviews/chartwell/)
Kerrick · 2023-12-29
A similar concept for print: the Miniscule family, supposedly legible down to 2pt. https://typographica.org/typeface-reviews/minuscule/
Bellyache5 · 2022-05-09
Calibri was part of a family of "C" fonts released together as the ClearType Font Collection. - https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/typography/cleartype/clear-type-font-… - https://typographica.org/on-typography/microsofts-cleartype-font-colle…
mikedc · 2021-08-17
In the US, "typefaces", ie. the shapes of the letters, generally are not. "Fonts", ie. the programs that draw the letters, are copyrighted as software, as something of a workaround. For more reading on the history here Typographica has a succinct overview[0]. [0] https://typographica.org/on-typography/copyright-protection-of-typefac…
perchard · 2018-12-09
This is enabling the piracy of typefaces. It takes significant skill and time to create a typeface, and creators should be paid for their work. Instead of pirating typefaces, please see: https://fontstand.com/ https://fonts.adobe.com/ https://typographica.org/on-typography/my-favorite-font-sources-a-shor… Many foundries also offer trial versions of their typefaces. For example: https://www.grillitype.com/free_trials If you don't want to pay for a typeface, there are many very good open source options available. For example: https://github.com/IBM/plex http://www.latofonts.com/lato-free-fonts/
jamessb · 2017-09-12
There are several predecessors with the same idea of using a font that represents numbers as a graph: FF Chartwell [1], Chartjunk [2], Datalegreya [3]. [1]: https://typographica.org/typeface-reviews/chartwell/ [2]: https://nsfmc.github.io/chartjunk/ [3]: http://figs-lab.com/datalegreya
panic · 2015-10-07
There was some discussion of this topic on typographica back in 2004: http://typographica.org/on-typography/automated-kerning-with-ikern/
Steko · 2015-05-26
It's really come a long way since launch. http://typographica.org/on-typography/roboto-typeface-is-a-four-headed… Kudos to Stephen Coles for keeping that article updated as the font has evolved and improved.
karl_nerd · 2012-03-12
Typographica featured a more educated slashing blogpost about Roboto: http://typographica.org/on-typography/roboto-typeface-is-a-four-headed…
danso · 2014-05-09
This was a surprisingly interesting and fun read. Contrary to what my assumption is, the switch to Linux was not chosen for being cheaper, as they projected the cost of migration to be more expensive than upgrading the Microsoft machines from NT/2000 to XP. The fact that a "conservative" city council went with Linux based on the strategic long-term is pretty impressive...Assuming that they aren't all tech engineers, it would be natural to stick with a computing platform that you yourself have been using your whole life, rather than impose an entirely new (and more expensive) one on your constituents. Also, at least in the American market, the money poured into sales people to wine-and-dine for government contracts provides even more compelling reasons for politicians and bureaucrats to not rock the boat. And in Munich's case, Steve Ballmer himself flew out, in person, to try to convince them not to quit Windows (and, in the OP's assessment, that apparently was an unwise tactic for Microsoft). OT: The body font of this article, Roboto (http://www.google.com/fonts/specimen/Roboto), stuck out to me as being both legible and distinctly different than Helvetica...I was reading the article on a tablet but went to my desktop just to see what it was...I think I've seen Roboto before on Google Fonts but not used as body text...I kind of like it, more than some of the common Helvetica replacements (Open/Ubuntu/PT Sans)...even before I started reading the article, I thought, "this is…

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