Domo Arigato ⇥

Glenn Fleishman in a very detailed, very interesting analysis of Roboto, the Android 4.0 typeface:

Roboto isn’t a humanist san serif, like Optima (a font I adore, by Hermann Zapf), with tapered thicknesses in straight strokes. But it still manages to reference handwriting, and to have the homunculi in our brains pull the right levers, even though it’s below the level of perception for the non-typophiliac.

This lets Roboto have the evenness and spacing needed for onscreen rasterization, while preserving a tiny bit of the feel of the hand that makes a typeface seem created by human beings, not automatons.

I don’t agree with Fleishman’s analysis of Helvetica Neue, nor the connotations that iOS carries and which he hints at, but doesn’t say. The article is worth a read, though. It’s typeset in Roboto, naturally, and I’m still not a fan. It’s not bad though.