I don't know about San Francisco as I haven't really spent any time reading it. But there's something slightly odd about Roboto, I can't quite put my finger on it but it's like there is slightly too much bulge in some places. Does anyone else get this?
Is it common for type faces to be so almost completely similar? SF looks nearly identical to FF DIN to my untrained eye, but even with tiny adjustments, it's bit more than inspired by.
In so many industries we talk about here there would already have been a stream of C&D letters and injunctions would be filed in court.
That is the one part about typography that has always confused me - San Francisco is clearly a variation of FF DIN. Can you buy a 'licenses' to use and make your own variation of a typeface?
From a copyright standpoint in the US, you can copy the glyph outlines of fonts (usually some form of bezier curve or in some cases bitmap) without violating copyright. They are completely uncopyrightable.
Most fonts though (TrueType and OpenType) have a hinting language in them which is code and it is copyrightable since it is computer software. This means you can't just copy DIN font files themselves and distribute them freely without permission.
You can however take the outlines from the font, recreate the hints manually and then distribute it.
That said, there are such things as design patents and of course, trademarks. Design patents aren't used too much, but do protect the design itself. Trademarks of course allow you to protect the name.
Another font with very similar character is Malmö Sans (only regular weight though, bold has high stroke contrast) [1]. Typographic details differ (Malmö looks more dynamic than San Francisco due to slanted terminal strokes), but basic forms make it look almost identical to San Francisco at smaller grades.
Maybe I'm just not very observant and/or a philistine but I can't be the only one that can't tell the difference between these fonts without looking very hard. I doubt I would be able to tell at all if you swapped any of those fonts.
Typography is an extremely constrained design space with tons of little details and small differences. If you constrain yourself to readable type suitable for use on screen the space gets smaller, still. That’s why I love it. You don’t have to – but you should also then probably not offer up your opinion on fonts (which you didn’t, but many people do, in that same sneering and really annoying way some people talk about contemporary art, for example).
That’s a really boring opinion that is tremendously uninteresting and completely unsurprising. I do not know why anyone feels the need to express an opinion so utterly boring and predictable. It’s just cliche, zero substance.
I mean, if you think something is not interesting why add to that uninterestingness by saying something that itself is so utterly uninteresting.
I’m really a fan of amateur thinking and talking about art because I am also quite clueless about art (contemporary and all other art), so I think it’s great to talk about it even if you are clueless, but I do try to avoid clichés and if I don’t get something I assume that I either don’t know the context (context does tremendous things to elevate all human endeavors and can make something that seems superficially boring or worthless very interesting) or that there really is nothing to it – but I don’t really possess the ability to judge what’s what.
I think that’s a very reasonable assumption to make when looking at contemporary art and you are clueless about art – and you also avoid dealing in clichés as a result.
