Vista and Office 2007 have many new fonts. NeoSmart takes a look at the ten most popular Vista and/or Office 12 fonts with screenshots, sample usages, and a critique of each font, one-by-one. These 10 fonts are the latin-based scripts that ship with Vista and/or Office 2007. My take: Microsoft has created some very beautiful fonts here. I especially like Segoe UI; it looks stunning when in use in Vista.
is just carbon-copy of Bitstream Vera?
Except more flawed (but then again, those could be produced when making bitmap image of the font, and not real flaws) lignatures than Bitstream Vera it looks just as it.
And Vera is being default UI font in a lot of distros.
Edited 2006-06-05 18:56
Um, NO. There are a TON of differences between Bitstream Vera Sans and Segoe.
Maybe you should actually try comparing them side-by-side first before making such a stupid post.
And Vera has nothing to do with this article.
—
Moving on… I think this is something Microsoft has traditionally done really well with — fonts. Granted, Segoe does seem like it’s pretty much a copy of the one mentioned in the post above mine. Regardless, there are still 6 other completely new fonts that are very beautiful.
Edited 2006-06-05 19:03
But right out theft has however.
None of the fonts are original. They are but pure rip-off.
However, I agree that none of the fonts look like Vera Sans.
None of the fonts are original. They are but pure rip-off.
Proof?
Don’t you get it? It’s the “let’s flame MS game” and you’re not playing by the rules!
Follow the other link.
Go take a look at font collections presented on the internet and you’ll realize that these fonts are identical to designs from the 1950’es and onward.
Segoe: yes
The others: umm no. Even if the styles are similar, these are designed specifically with ClearType in mind. The hinting and what have you are optimized.
Either way, either provide direct comparisons for the other fonts being “rip offs” or stop making the claims please.
Take Candara.
That’s a redesign of a font from the 1930’es. It may not be theft in the legal sense, but that is irrelevant in regard to whether it’s a rip-off.
a font from the 1930s? What font? You can’t just expect people to know exactly what you are talking about.
I believe that particularly font is named “Optimum” or “Optima” or something with “Opt*”.
It’s a middlething between sans serif and serif – and very beautiful. I like the fonts, but I don’t like the hype around them, because we’re talking about designs decades old.
Optima comes with Windows too.. And believe me, they’re not even that similar.
The “Optima” I think of does not come with any version of Windows prior to Vista. It may be a part of Vista, but it sure as **** isn’t a part of Windows 1.X/2.X/3.X/9x/ME/NT/2000/XP/2003.
Nor is it a part of MS Office up to Office 2003.
Look, find it, compare them, post it, then talk. Please.
There are a few differences, mostly in the minor letters. Especially the “h”.
The “h” in Candara resembles something in between Tahoma and Optima.
It has the angular look from Tahoma and the Sans Serif/Serif-melted look from Optima.
Which versions of Windows ships with “Optima” ?
nvm… it’s linux that has Optima
But anyway, your telling me THIS http://www.fontseek.com/fonts/optima.htm
looks like Candara?!
Candara and Nyala are the most unique on that entire list!
Umm… perhaps you should try the Linotype version?
BTW: There is no Optima on my Linux system. Is it installed/distributed under another name?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optima
“Optima is the name of a typeface designed by Hermann Zapf between 1952-1955. In 2002 Hermann Zapf together with Akira Kobayashi, typedirector at Linotype GmbH, redesigned and extended Optima to Optima nova. This new type family has new true italic weights and a series of condensed weights and a special Optima nova Titling version with extraordinary caps ligatures.
A mid-20th century sans-serif design, Optima at first looks a little like a traditional sans-serif. However, its strokes are delicately tapered and carry residual serifs. In many ways, Optima’s design follows humanist lines, but its italic variant is merely an oblique, a slanted Roman.
Like Palatino, another Zapf creation, Optima is widely admired and widely imitated. Optima and Palatino are trademarks of Heidelberger Druckmaschinen AG.
In the Bitstream font collection, Optima is called Zapf Humanist. Other Optima clones are Optane from the WSI Fonts collection, Opulent by Rubicon, CG Omega, and Eterna.
Optima is the typeface used on the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall.”
Nothing there I didn’t know. And unrelated to my post btw.
If it hasn’t got other names, then it’s not installed on my system, nor has it ever been a part of Gentoo nor Redhat/Fedora.
That’s a redesign of a font from the 1930’es. It may not be theft in the legal sense, but that is irrelevant in regard to whether it’s a rip-off.
Give us some evidence, a comparison, and I’ll take the rip-off factor into account. As for now, I side with sappyvcv.
Maybe you should actually try comparing them side-by-side first before making such a stupid post
Yep, where do I download these fonts?
I stopped following Vista months ago. Nothing interesting (for my case that is) was happening. I probably won’t need to move on Vista until SP2, so I could stop looking at this OS.
Actualy looking at the claimed font bitmap in Frutiger-Segoe and the one in this article showed how bad quality images were.
Granted, Segoe does seem like it’s pretty much a copy of the one mentioned in the post above mine.
Preety much a copy? Did you actualy read the PDF that was linked in article parent provided. A LOT OF CHARACTERS ARE EXACT COPY. And this claim won that case.
[From the article]
“As rightfully observed by the Applicant and uncontested by the Holder, the prior design and the RCD are to be considered identical. The typefaces of both designs have the same stroke thickness. The ratio from cap-height to descender height is equal. The proportion of character height to character pitch is identical. The type face in the specimen text does not show any differences. The minuscule “a”, “c”, “e” “g” and “t” have the same proportion in the prior design and the RCD. The height of the crossbeam at the “e” is identical. The height of the bow at the “a” is identical. The “c” shows the same shape and the same loophole. The lowercase “s” and the capital “S” show the same sweep. The capital “G” and “S” are totally identical in both designs. The numeric characters “3”, “5”, “6” and “9” do not show any difference.”
This could almost only be possible with actual copy/paste.
c..c..c.. and you’re accusing my post being blatant? How about yours then?
btw. I missed the font, but I still got the fact this is a rip-off. Why would my post be blatant:?
Edited 2006-06-05 20:07
Preety much a copy? Did you actualy read the PDF that was linked in article parent provided. A LOT OF CHARACTERS ARE EXACT COPY. And this claim won that case.
Um.. that doesn’t contradict what I said at all. Pretty much a copy, as in it’s pretty much a copy but not 100%. 95% or more maybe? I don’t know, I’m not going to narrow it down that much. Sheesh man, chill.
It is a nice looking font, but it’s not Microsoft’s:
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20060404-6517.html
Frutiger is a very well known font; it’s highly doubtful that MS’s font designers weren’t aware of it.
Look at those fonts.
Very beautiful and they should be. It’s pure rip-off all the way.
Those fonts are actually decades old.
Nice fonts. I’m also surpised that Microsoft is publishing them under a nice licence.
Does anybody knows if they are downloadable somewhere ?
> Nice fonts. I’m also surpised that Microsoft is publishing them under a nice licence.
Do you mean the following paragraph?
“License
This work is published under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5 License”
That applies to the blog entry, not to the fonts!
That applies to the blog entry, not to the fonts!
Doh ! You’re right !
I was _so_ impressed by the fonts that I lost the meaning of what I was reading 🙂
It sound too strange anyway that microsoft released something under the CC !
You guys are flaming MS.
MS didn’t even WRITE these.. Most of them were written by typography professionals FOR MS… Not by MS Typography team themselves who mostly do research and stuff of the like. For proof look at the typography website.
How can I say this nicely…
Focus more on the current Vista issues before designing a new font.
Thanks.
I’m guessing this is a troll, because you can’t possibly be serious.
Aside from the fact that there are thousands of people working on different Vista things in paralell, Microsoft didn’t make these. They paid a company that specializes in fonts to do it.
What’s so hard to understand?
Then they need to take one off payroll and put another on payroll. Things arn’t getting done and release date is rolling near, they need to get on the ball and fix the current issues.
Let’s see when Vista is released:
Heres an OS with a bunch of problems but WAIT it has pretty fonts!!! and look a glass UI!! and see those scalable icons!! Yea use them..
Please.
They should move everyone from their legal department into the Vista development so that they can finish the code faster! And if that doesn’t get it done rapidly they can scour the area for transients! And if that doesn’t do it, they can start offering the people working at McDonald’s $10/h to develop Vista.
You want lawyers to write Vista? You out of your mind?
Your sarcasm meter is off. I suggest a tune up.
Microsoft didn’t make these. They paid a company that specializes in fonts to do it.
I am glad they did.
I hope they pay some other company to redo their icons too, and stick to it.
Microsoft paid someone to do their xp icons, but they ended up using using some of their own, which needless to say, were crap.
The teams are independant and have nothing to do with one another. The guys working on fonts aren’t the programmers.
They can’t even invent an original Latin alphabet! Where’s the inovation?
ABCDE…XYZ are soooo last millenia.
The font’s look great though; give Microsoft credit where it’s due.
Edited 2006-06-05 19:59
Typography is a very “conservative” art. Unless you completely copy another’s work, point for point, it’s not ripping anyone off. If you improve or change a font enough, it’s positive evolution. That’s always a good thing.
Myriad is not Frutiger. Arial is not Helvetica nor is it Grotesque. Constantia isn’t Warnock. Warnock isn’t Garamond.
They’re all different, but many of them have connections with other typefaces. Some are arguably very poor or negative evolutions where as others are very good. Each has to be evaluated however not on it’s previous ancestors –or by it’s children– but by it’s own merits. This isn’t always easy to do.
Matthew Carter, Microsoft’s chief Typographer once said (paraphrasing here) that no typeface is ugly, it’s simply how and where it’s used that makes it improper.
Matthew Carter, Microsoft’s chief Typographer once said (paraphrasing here) that no typeface is ugly, it’s simply how and where it’s used that makes it improper.
This is clearly a man who has never seen my first attempt at a sans-serif font using MetaFont
“no typeface is ugly”
Comic Sans MS, anyone?
High quality detailed fonts is an area I applaud Microsoft. The new Vista Consolas font is awe-inspiring for programming and text editing. I haven’t witnessed any font as beautiful, detailed and functional as Consolas, especially for text editing. Arial and Consolas are my two favorite fonts. Ironically, Microsoft fonts look better on my Linux box than they do on my Windows one.
Screenshot of Consolas and Arial:
http://www.deviantart.com/view/14143494/
Woo! You aren’t kidding. I just downloaded the Consolas font pack for Visual Studio and its very nice! Always had a probablem telling my curly braces from parens at high resolution in Curior New.
thanks
and here they can download this precious gem
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=22e69ae4-7…
All this nonsense boils down to one, simple statement: there’s only so many ways you can design an ‘h’.
Right. There are only so many ways you can design an “A” and only so many ways you can design a “B” and so on. But if you add them up, the numbers get very large very quickly.
The same goes for writing texts. There are only 26 letters in the (English) alphabet and there are only so many valid words, but if I write a 1000-word piece that just happens to be almost exactly the same as one of your articles (except for a hand-full of words), I’m sure few would honestly think that the similarity was just due to the finite space of valid English texts and coincidence.
Any serious type designer who is capable of creating something like Segoe will be well versed in type history and the development of the different styles of type that exist today. There’s simply no way they could have designed Segoe without knowing about Frutiger — it’s such a well-known and classic typeface. Frutiger is one of the first of the humanist san serifs, and it has inspired lots of other typefaces (and also been imitated many times). Obviously, there’s a fine line between inspiration and imitation, but there’s a difference between using similar design for a hand-full of glyphs or being inspired by the overall look versus making pretty much every glyph the same, except some minor tweaks.
However, at least in the US, typeface designs can’t be copyrighted (although you can get a design patent for a typeface). So, creating an identical or very similar typeface as an existing one isn’t illegal. It’s just that it’s frowned upon within the type community.
..are that they’re probably under some restrictive MS license. So if people use them on webpages and documents they wont look good on other operating systems.
Anyway, are there any need for new fonts?
..are that they’re probably under some restrictive MS license. So if people use them on webpages and documents they wont look good on other operating systems.
The msttcorefonts don’t have a restrictive license at all, so I’m wondering where you get the above idea from. MS’s webfonts package (Arial, Trebuchet MS, etc) have a very simple license (they need to include a license when distributed) and that’s it.
http://corefonts.sourceforge.net/faq8.htm
http://corefonts.sourceforge.net/eula.htm
Didn’t you read the sites you linked to? The problems with the corefonts are that:
1. Distributions can’t ship them. People have to find and download them themselves.
2. The exes can’t be changed in any way. So people will have to extract, convert and install them themselves.
This are always *variations* of other older font models.
To see an hybrid variation see:
http://www.myfonts.com/fonts/linotype/optima/
But if you have time see one of the most elegant sites here:
http://www.linotype.com/18/formfinder.html
Edited 2006-06-05 22:00
It was about time they got rid of Times New Roman as Word’s default. I personally can’t stand Serifs.
Just to keep on beating on the dead horse, Calibri, Candara and Corbel (which are all quite similar) appear to have a lot in common with Luxi.
…they were pretty clean. On another note, how different can any new fonts BE? I mean, you can only tweak and change a given font so much to create a new and readable one. There is a good chance that the new serif, monospaced font developer A creates will be very similar to new serif monospaced font developer B creates, because how different CAN you make a serif’ed monospaced font?
..A through G would be available now but limited in functionality, H to N would be in ‘Limited Release Beta’, N to V would be ‘Available via a service pack’ after the product ships, and W to Z would be removed completely so they could ship on time.
…sorry…couldn’t help myself
and all the lower case letters would be patented.
Several organizations would come forward claiming to have prior art showing that lower case letters were not a MS invention, but MS lawyers would counter by claiming that since no one had tried making a profit off of them before, they were fair game.
Ok. Enough with the MS bashing, now…
Edited 2006-06-06 06:46
when marginally better fonts are *Operating System* news.
Now I want to see how the web designers will use the new fonts and make it work for people using older versions of Windows, not to mention other operating systems. 🙂
check out WEFT-3 by MS.. It does just that
Web pages (can) use font lists – the list is tried from left to right until a font that the user has is located, so you can degrade gracefully if you dont have hot-new-fonts.
Silly boy; all the lower case letters will be available in only the ‘ultimate edition’; puntuations will be sold in an extra bundle for $49.95.
In my opinion, this fonts are ugly! Have you ever seen the fonts on Mac OS X or Linux? They are much better!
Here see this:
http://sk8t.sk.funpic.de/font.png
May you think the font on the right is a bit too softly, but then see how good you can see even little fonts:
http://sk8t.sk.funpic.de/shot1.png
http://sk8t.sk.funpic.de/shot2.png
pay attention to the little fonts!
I didn’t think that Segoe was an MS font, because it has been shipping with Palm’s VersaMail app for years.
Microsoft has changed their stance on msttcorefonts, they don’t want it to be freely available, and they are certainly not going to do the same to new fonts, when they wish they hadn’t for the old ones.
These are actually rather nice fonts, although every single one of them has very heavy influences from prior art (try taking a look at say Melior or Caflisch Script) but that is not really a gripe – there are tens of thousands of typefaces out there and almost every one has inspired at least one similar design (or copy).
No my gripe is that when Office 12 (or whatever it gets called) hits the streets then print and pre-press guys like me are going to get deluged in Word .docs filled with these fonts (that all look dangerously like older well established faces but aren’t) – and guess what – where can I get a copy of these fonts? Oh yes! By buying a copy of Office that I probably don’t need and definitely don’t want but will have to have to get my hands on the fonts that every numpty from here to Timbuktu is going to slam into every available document!
Well that is one way to pump up the uptake of a new version of your software I suppose…
But when it comes to the press, I still prefer Computer Modern by Knuth.
http://www.poynter.org/column.asp?id=47&aid=78683 has some nice previews of a number of the fonts, certainly better renderings, in some ways, than those offered by this blogger’s slapdash review.