At first glance, Twitter’s typeface choice seems strictly practical in nature. Gotham’s roomier, more relaxed design makes it more comfortable than Helvetica to read on phones and tablets. (Contrary to Apple’s risible announcementyesterday that its upcoming OS X Yosemite will use Helvetica to improve legibility, the typeface isn’t easy to read on small screens.) Gotham is also familiar, having been used for everything from Saturday Night Live’s opening credits to Barack Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign. And for a “non-system” font—meaning, a font that’s not prepackaged in a given operating system—Gotham offers a decent ability to be rendered consistently among various platforms.
1
But not all platforms. In fact, maybe more interesting than what Twitter’s new type selection accomplishes is what it leaves out. Namely, most of the scripts used in the countries where it’s growing the fastest.
+
A big drawback to Gotham is that it lacks character sets for Arabic, Cyrillic, Indic, and other major non-Latin writing systems, says Stephen Coles, a typographer and the author of The Anatomy of Type. That’s despite the fact that these areincreasingly popular on Twitter.
more here
http://qz.com/216117/twitters-new-typeface-leaves-out-its-fastest-growing-users/
more here
http://qz.com/216117/twitters-new-typeface-leaves-out-its-fastest-growing-users/
