[Talk-us] Fonts

[Elliott Plack]

Paul, great point. Taking a look at how Apple Maps handles their state
shields
<https://www.justinobeirne.com/google-maps-apple-maps-highway-shield-icons>,
they appear to use Helvetica in place of Highway Gothic, or one of the open
variants. At that scale it is hard to tell other than at a side by side
comparison level. I think Helvetica would probably be fine for this purpose
if it matches the 'style' of US-type shields at a 12pt scale (ish).

Google Maps vs. Apple Maps: U.S. State Highway Shield Icons
(justinobeirne.com)
<https://www.justinobeirne.com/google-maps-apple-maps-highway-shield-icons>

Thanks for the comment!

- Elliott


On Wed, Jan 26, 2022 at 4:55 PM Paul Johnson <baloo at ursamundi.org> wrote:

> On Wed, Jan 26, 2022 at 3:06 PM Elliott Plack <elliott.plack at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>> Great work Brian and Collaborators! I too would love to see those shields
>> use the FHWA standard  Highway Gothic - Wikipedia
>> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Highway_Gothic> fonts where applicable.
>> They should be public domain as works of the US Federal Government.
>>
>
> I'm not sure it'll work in a lot of cases...if only because some shields
> interior size is pretty small, and Highway Gothic is a pretty chunky sign
> font really not designed to scale down to small sizes on screens.
> Clearview does slightly better at small on-screen sizes but is also a
> chunky sign font that doesn't work great as a screen font.  I think the
> current version has a pretty acceptable compromise in terms of appearance
> while still being a font that's actually legible when small.
>
> There's very few sign fonts that also work as screen fonts; they're rather
> opposite goals.  Helvetica's the only one that comes to mind.
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