Apple Typography
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Apple Inc. uses a large variety of
typeface A typeface (or font family) is the design of lettering that can include variations in size, weight (e.g. bold), slope (e.g. italic), width (e.g. condensed), and so on. Each of these variations of the typeface is a font. There are thousands o ...
s in its
marketing Marketing is the process of exploring, creating, and delivering value to meet the needs of a target market in terms of goods and services; potentially including selection of a target audience; selection of certain attributes or themes to emph ...
,
operating system An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware, software resources, and provides common daemon (computing), services for computer programs. Time-sharing operating systems scheduler (computing), schedule tasks for ef ...
s, and
industrial design Industrial design is a process of design applied to physical products that are to be manufactured by mass production. It is the creative act of determining and defining a product's form and features, which takes place in advance of the manufactu ...
with each product cycle. These change throughout the years with Apple's change of style in their products. This is evident in the design and marketing of the company.


Marketing

For at least 18 years, Apple's corporate typeface was a custom variant of the ITC
Garamond Garamond is a group of many serif typefaces, named for sixteenth-century Parisian engraver Claude Garamond, generally spelled as Garamont in his lifetime. Garamond-style typefaces are popular and particularly often used for book printing and bo ...
typeface called Apple Garamond. It was used alongside the Apple
logo A logo (abbreviation of logotype; ) is a graphic mark, emblem, or symbol used to aid and promote public identification and recognition. It may be of an abstract or figurative design or include the text of the name it represents as in a wo ...
for product names on computers, in many ads and printed materials, and on the company's website. Starting in 2001, Apple gradually shifted towards using
Myriad A myriad (from Ancient Greek grc, μυριάς, translit=myrias, label=none) is technically the number 10,000 (ten thousand); in that sense, the term is used in English almost exclusively for literal translations from Greek, Latin or Sinospher ...
in its marketing. Starting with iPhone 7 in 2016, Apple switched the typeface of the word mark "iPhone" to
San Francisco San Francisco (; Spanish for " Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the fourth most populous in California and 17t ...
on products and its website.


Hand-drawn logo

Prior to adopting the bitten Apple as its logo, Apple used a complex logo featuring
Isaac Newton Sir Isaac Newton (25 December 1642 – 20 March 1726/27) was an English mathematician, physicist, astronomer, alchemist, Theology, theologian, and author (described in his time as a "natural philosophy, natural philosopher"), widely ...
sitting below an
apple An apple is an edible fruit produced by an apple tree (''Malus domestica''). Apple trees are cultivated worldwide and are the most widely grown species in the genus '' Malus''. The tree originated in Central Asia, where its wild ancest ...
tree. The words ''APPLE COMPUTER CO.'' were drawn on a ribbon banner ornamenting the picture frame. The frame itself held a quotation from Wordsworth: "Newton....A Mind Forever Voyaging Through Strange Seas of Thought...Alone.", taken from Wordsworth's autobiographical poem ''
The Prelude ''The Prelude or, Growth of a Poet's Mind; An Autobiographical Poem '' is an autobiographical poem in blank verse by the English poet William Wordsworth. Intended as the introduction to the more philosophical poem ''The Recluse,'' which Wordsw ...
''. The logo was hand drawn and thus did not use an established font. However, the type is similar to
Caslon Caslon is the name given to serif typefaces designed by William Caslon I (c. 1692–1766) in London, or inspired by his work. Caslon worked as an engraver of punches, the masters used to stamp the moulds or matrices used to cast metal ty ...
.


Motter Tektura

Before the introduction of the first Macintosh, alongside the Apple logo, Apple used a typeface called Motter Tektura, which was designed in Austria by Othmar Motter of Vorarlberger Graphik in 1975 and distributed by
Letraset Letraset was a company known mainly for manufacturing sheets of typefaces and other artwork elements using the dry transfer method. Letraset has been acquired by the Colart group and become part of its subsidiary Winsor & Newton. Corporate his ...
(and also famously used by
Reebok Reebok International Limited () is an American fitness footwear and clothing manufacturer that is a part of Authentic Brands Group. It was established in England in 1958 as a companion company to J.W. Foster and Sons, a sporting goods company ...
). At the time, the typeface was considered new and modern. One modification to the typeface was the removal of the dot over the ''i''. The ''s'' was also modified for the label on the
Disk II The Disk II Floppy Disk Subsystem, often rendered as Disk ] '', is a -inch floppy disk drive designed by Apple Computer, Inc. It went on sale in June 1978 at a retail price of US$495 for pre-order; it was later sold for $595 () including the Di ...
5.25-inch floppy disk drive. According to the logo designer,
Rob Janoff Rob Janoff is an American graphic designer of corporate logos and identities, printed advertisements and television commercials. He is known for his creation of the Apple logo. In 1977, Janoff worked for Regis McKenna as an art director and was ...
, the typeface was selected for its playful qualities and techno look, which were in line with Apple's mission statement of making high technology accessible to anyone. Janoff designed the logo in 1977 while working with
Palo Alto Palo Alto (; Spanish for "tall stick") is a charter city in the northwestern corner of Santa Clara County, California, United States, in the San Francisco Bay Area, named after a coastal redwood tree known as El Palo Alto. The city was es ...
marketer Marketing is the process of exploring, creating, and delivering value to meet the needs of a target market in terms of goods and services; potentially including selection of a target audience; selection of certain attributes or themes to empha ...
Regis McKenna Regis McKenna has been an influential marketer in tech and introduced some techniques today commonplace among advertisers. He and his firm covered the first microprocessor (Intel Corporation), Apple's first personal computer (Apple Computer), the ...
. The Apple logo's bite mark was originally designed to fit snugly with the Motter Tektura ''a''. In the early 1980s, the logo was simplified by removing ''computer .'' from the logo. Motter Tektura was also used for the
Apple II The Apple II (stylized as ) is an 8-bit home computer and one of the world's first highly successful mass-produced microcomputer products. It was designed primarily by Steve Wozniak; Jerry Manock developed the design of Apple II's foam-m ...
logo. This typeface has sometimes been mislabeled Cupertino, a similar bitmap font probably created to mimic Motter Tektura.


Apple Garamond

Since the introduction of the
Macintosh The Mac (known as Macintosh until 1999) is a family of personal computers designed and marketed by Apple Inc., Apple Inc. Macs are known for their ease of use and minimalist designs, and are popular among students, creative professionals, and ...
in 1984, Apple adopted a new corporate font called Apple Garamond. It was a variation of the classic
Garamond Garamond is a group of many serif typefaces, named for sixteenth-century Parisian engraver Claude Garamond, generally spelled as Garamont in his lifetime. Garamond-style typefaces are popular and particularly often used for book printing and bo ...
typeface, both narrower and having a taller
x-height upright 2.0, alt=A diagram showing the line terms used in typography In typography, the x-height, or corpus size, is the distance between the baseline and the mean line of lowercase letters in a typeface. Typically, this is the height of the le ...
. Specifically, ITC Garamond (created by Tony Stan in 1977) was condensed to 80% of its normal width.
Bitstream A bitstream (or bit stream), also known as binary sequence, is a sequence of bits. A bytestream is a sequence of bytes. Typically, each byte is an 8-bit quantity, and so the term octet stream is sometimes used interchangeably. An octet may ...
condensed the font, subtly adjusted the stroke widths, and performed the
hinting Font hinting (also known as instructing) is the use of mathematical instructions to adjust the display of an outline font so that it lines up with a rasterized grid. At low screen resolutions, hinting is critical for producing clear, legible tex ...
required to create the font, which was delivered to Apple as the Postscript font "apgaram". In cases where the Apple logo was accompanied by text, it was always set in Apple Garamond. Aside from the company name, most of Apple's advertising and marketing slogans, such as "
Think different "Think different" is an advertising slogan used from 1997 to 2002 by Apple Computer, Inc., now named Apple Inc. The campaign was created by the Los Angeles office of advertising agency TBWA\Chiat\Day. The slogan has been widely taken as a resp ...
.", used the font as well. The typeface was virtually synonymous with Apple for almost two decades and formed a large part of the company's
brand recognition Brand awareness is the extent to which customers are able to recall or recognize a brand under different conditions. Brand awareness is one of two dimensions from brand knowledge, an associative network memory model. Brand awareness is a key consi ...
. It was used not only in conjunction with the logo, but also in manuals and ads and to label products with model names. Apple has not released the true Apple Garamond font. ITC briefly sold ITC Garamond Narrow—Apple Garamond without the custom hinting—as part of its Apple Font Pack in the 1990s. A version of the font was also included under a different name in some versions of Mac OS X prior to 10.3 as it was used by the Setup Assistant installation program.


Gill Sans

In the marketing of the Newton/Notepad/MessagePad
PDA PDA may refer to: Science and technology * Patron-driven acquisition, a mechanism for libraries to purchase books *Personal digital assistant, a mobile device * Photodiode array, a type of detector * Polydiacetylenes, a family of conducting po ...
(starting in 1992), Apple used
Gill Sans Gill Sans is a humanist sans-serif typeface designed by Eric Gill and released by the British branch of Monotype from 1928 onwards. Gill Sans is based on Edward Johnston's 1916 "Underground Alphabet", the corporate font of London Undergro ...
instead of the regular Apple Garamond. Gill Sans Regular was used in the logo, for the model name on the computer, on the keyboard and in advertisement materials, though it was not used as a screen font (except as part of the Newton logo).


Myriad

In 2003, Apple gradually started using a variant of the Adobe
Myriad A myriad (from Ancient Greek grc, μυριάς, translit=myrias, label=none) is technically the number 10,000 (ten thousand); in that sense, the term is used in English almost exclusively for literal translations from Greek, Latin or Sinospher ...
font family in its marketing and packaging. As new revisions of its products were released, the text changed from the serif Apple Garamond to the sans-serif Myriad Apple. The family's bolds were used for headlines, and other weights accordingly. The Myriad font family was designed by
Robert Slimbach Robert Joseph Slimbach is Principal Type Designer at Adobe, Inc., where he has worked since 1987. He has won many awards for his digital typeface designs, including the rarely awarded Prix Charles Peignot from the Association Typographique Inter ...
and
Carol Twombly Carol Twombly (born June 13, 1959) is an American designer, best known for her type design. She worked as a type designer at Adobe Systems from 1988 through 1999, during which time she designed, or contributed to the design of, many typefaces, in ...
for
Adobe Adobe ( ; ) is a building material made from earth and organic materials. is Spanish for '' mudbrick''. In some English-speaking regions of Spanish heritage, such as the Southwestern United States, the term is used to refer to any kind of ...
. Adobe's most recent version of Myriad is Myriad Pro, which has some additional enhancements and character set extensions, but is not significantly changed in design. Myriad Apple, a modification produced by Galápagos Design Group, incorporates minor spacing and weight differences from the standard varieties, and includes Apple-specific characters, such as the company logo. In 2006, Myriad Apple was superseded by Myriad Set, which contains extra ligatures and other minor changes. As of November 2013, lighter fonts are prevalent in Apple's marketing, with headlines in Myriad Pro Light. Occasionally an even lighter variant of Myriad is used for specialized marketing materials and press releases.


San Francisco

Starting with the release of the
Apple Watch Apple Watch is a line of smartwatches produced by Apple Inc. It incorporates fitness tracking, health-oriented capabilities, and wireless telecommunication, and integrates with iOS and other Apple products and services. The Apple Watch was rel ...
, Apple has begun usage of
San Francisco San Francisco (; Spanish for " Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the fourth most populous in California and 17t ...
as the typeface of word marks such as "iPhone", "AirPods", and "MacBook Pro" on the devices themselves. This change is also reflected on some headlines on product marketing webpages. Apple modified the majority of its website's text to use the San Francisco font on January 24, 2017, and San Francisco became the universal official font for Apple.


System fonts

Apple has used a variety of system fonts for the
user interface In the industrial design field of human–computer interaction, a user interface (UI) is the space where interactions between humans and machines occur. The goal of this interaction is to allow effective operation and control of the machine f ...
of its products.


Early fonts

Apple's earliest computers, along with other personal computers of the period, had extremely limited graphical capabilities and could originally display only uppercase
ASCII ASCII ( ), abbreviated from American Standard Code for Information Interchange, is a character encoding standard for electronic communication. ASCII codes represent text in computers, telecommunications equipment, and other devices. Because ...
using a set bitmap font. The IIc and Enhanced
Apple IIe The Apple IIe (styled as Apple //e) is the third model in the Apple II series of personal computers produced by Apple Computer. The ''e'' in the name stands for ''enhanced'', referring to the fact that several popular features were now built-in ...
expanded on this, supporting 40 or 80 columns of text and an extended character set called MouseText. It was used to simulate simple graphical user interfaces, similar to the use of
ANSI The American National Standards Institute (ANSI ) is a private non-profit organization that oversees the development of voluntary consensus standards for products, services, processes, systems, and personnel in the United States. The organi ...
X3.64. The first Apple computer with a purely bitmapped display, the Lisa, shipped in 1983. It used a system font with distinctive V and W letterforms.


Chicago and Charcoal

The
Macintosh The Mac (known as Macintosh until 1999) is a family of personal computers designed and marketed by Apple Inc., Apple Inc. Macs are known for their ease of use and minimalist designs, and are popular among students, creative professionals, and ...
, introduced in 1984, used a
bitmap font A computer font is implemented as a digital data file containing a set of graphically related glyphs. A computer font is designed and created using a font editor. A computer font specifically designed for the computer screen, and not for print ...
,
Chicago (''City in a Garden''); I Will , image_map = , map_caption = Interactive Map of Chicago , coordinates = , coordinates_footnotes = , subdivision_type = List of sovereign states, Count ...
, designed by Susan Kare. In
Mac OS 8 Mac OS 8 is an operating system that was released by Apple Computer on July 26, 1997. It includes the largest overhaul of the classic Mac OS experience since the release of System 7, approximately six years before. It places a greater emphasis o ...
, introduced in 1997, the system font of Mac OS was changed to
Charcoal Charcoal is a lightweight black carbon residue produced by strongly heating wood (or other animal and plant materials) in minimal oxygen to remove all water and volatile constituents. In the traditional version of this pyrolysis process, ...
. Charcoal was designed by David Berlow of Font Bureau, to be easier to read than Chicago, while retaining similar metrics for backward compatibility with existing application software. When released in 2001, Apple's
iPod The iPod is a discontinued series of portable media players and multi-purpose mobile devices designed and marketed by Apple Inc. The first version was released on October 23, 2001, about months after the Macintosh version of iTunes wa ...
music player reused the Macintosh font Chicago as the system font. Later versions of the iPod drew from the larger character repertoire of the
TrueType TrueType is an outline font standard developed by Apple in the late 1980s as a competitor to Adobe's Type 1 fonts used in PostScript. It has become the most common format for fonts on the classic Mac OS, macOS, and Microsoft Windows operating ...
Chicago (''City in a Garden''); I Will , image_map = , map_caption = Interactive Map of Chicago , coordinates = , coordinates_footnotes = , subdivision_type = List of sovereign states, Count ...
, adding a number of characters not present in the bitmap Chicago, such as
Greek Greek may refer to: Greece Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe: *Greeks, an ethnic group. *Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family. **Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor ...
and
Cyrillic The Cyrillic script ( ), Slavonic script or the Slavic script, is a writing system used for various languages across Eurasia. It is the designated national script in various Slavic, Turkic, Mongolic, Uralic, Caucasian and Iranic-speaking co ...
. Even though the screen supported grayscale, the characters were not anti-aliased.


Geneva

For smaller user interface elements, such as the names of files displayed with icons in the Finder, Apple used the
Geneva Geneva ( ; french: Genève ) frp, Genèva ; german: link=no, Genf ; it, Ginevra ; rm, Genevra is the second-most populous city in Switzerland (after Zürich) and the most populous city of Romandy, the French-speaking part of Switzerland. Situa ...
typeface, a redesigned version of Helvetica.


Shaston

Introduced in 1986, the Apple IIGS, had very tall pixels (pixel aspect ratio of 5:12 or 5:6, with 640 × 200 or 320 × 200 pixels in a 4:3 image), thus requiring a stout, 8-point bitmap font called Shaston 8 as the system font (for menus, window titles, etc.). Shaston was described in Apple IIGS technote #41 as "a modified
Helvetica Helvetica (originally Neue Haas Grotesk) is a widely used sans-serif typeface developed in 1957 by Swiss typeface designer Max Miedinger and Eduard Hoffmann. Helvetica is a neo-grotesque design, one influenced by the famous 19th century (1890s) ...
", but the similarities are not striking. The fonts of the original Macintosh were also available for the GS.


Espy Sans

In 1991, Apple's Human Interface Group contracted with LetterPerfect Fonts' Garrett Boge and Damon Clark, to design a family of bitmap screen fonts to replace Chicago and Geneva for the Mac OS version 7.5. The family consisted of Sans & Serif, Regular and Bold in discrete bitmap sizes of 8, 9, 10, 12 & 14 pt. The Sans, proving most useful for screen readability, was also used for the Newton OS GUI. The Newton used the font Apple Casual to display text entered using the
Rosetta Rosetta or Rashid (; ar, رشيد ' ; french: Rosette  ; cop, ϯⲣⲁϣⲓⲧ ''ti-Rashit'', Ancient Greek: Βολβιτίνη ''Bolbitinē'') is a port city of the Nile Delta, east of Alexandria, in Egypt's Beheira governorate. The R ...
handwriting recognition engine in the Newton. The same font found its way into the Rosetta-derived writing recognition system in Mac OS X—
Inkwell An inkwell is a small jar or container, often made of glass, porcelain, silver, brass, or pewter, used for holding ink in a place convenient for the person who is writing. The artist or writer dips the brush, quill, or dip pen into the inkwell ...
. The
TrueType TrueType is an outline font standard developed by Apple in the late 1980s as a competitor to Adobe's Type 1 fonts used in PostScript. It has become the most common format for fonts on the classic Mac OS, macOS, and Microsoft Windows operating ...
font can be made available to any application by copying the font file, which is embedded in a system component, to any font folder. (See List of macOS fonts for more information.) The Newton logo featured the
Gill Sans Gill Sans is a humanist sans-serif typeface designed by Eric Gill and released by the British branch of Monotype from 1928 onwards. Gill Sans is based on Edward Johnston's 1916 "Underground Alphabet", the corporate font of London Undergro ...
typeface, which was also used for the Newton keyboard. Espy Sans was later used as the font for Apple's eWorld online service in 1994. (eWorld also used the larger bold condensed
bitmap font A computer font is implemented as a digital data file containing a set of graphically related glyphs. A computer font is designed and created using a font editor. A computer font specifically designed for the computer screen, and not for print ...
eWorld Tight for headlines. The metrics of eWorld Tight were based on Helvetica Ultra Compressed.) The iPod mini, released in 2004, also used Espy Sans.


Lucida Grande

Since its introduction in 2000 up through
OS X Mavericks OS X Mavericks (version 10.9) is the 10th major release of macOS, Apple Inc.'s desktop and server operating system for Macintosh computers. OS X Mavericks was announced on June 10, 2013, at WWDC 2013, and was released on October 22, 2013, wo ...
,
Lucida Grande Lucida Grande is a humanist sans-serif typeface. It is a member of the Lucida family of typefaces designed by Charles Bigelow and Kris Holmes. It is best known for its implementation throughout the macOS user interface from 1999 to 2014, as ...
was the system font used in Mac OS X user interface elements, such as menus, dialog boxes, and other widgets. It was superseded by Helvetica Neue.


Podium Sans

Starting in 2004, the iPod photo, 5th-generation
iPod The iPod is a discontinued series of portable media players and multi-purpose mobile devices designed and marketed by Apple Inc. The first version was released on October 23, 2001, about months after the Macintosh version of iTunes wa ...
, and 1st- through 2nd-generation
iPod nano The iPod Nano (stylised and marketed as iPod nano) is a discontinued portable media player designed and formerly marketed by Apple Inc. The first generation model was introduced on September 7, 2005, as a replacement for the iPod Mini, usin ...
feature a bitmap font known as
Podium Sans Podium Sans is the typeface used on all models of iPod with color displays previous to the iPod lineup refresh on September 5, 2007. When the iPod photo was first announced Apple claimed that the device featured a "new Myriad typeface," stati ...
, displacing the use of
Chicago (''City in a Garden''); I Will , image_map = , map_caption = Interactive Map of Chicago , coordinates = , coordinates_footnotes = , subdivision_type = List of sovereign states, Count ...
as the iPod system font. Although originally promoted as Myriad, Podium Sans is missing Myriad's trademark features, such as the splayed "M" and distinctive "y".


Helvetica

Since the introduction of the 1st-generation iPhone in 2007, Apple has used
Helvetica Helvetica (originally Neue Haas Grotesk) is a widely used sans-serif typeface developed in 1957 by Swiss typeface designer Max Miedinger and Eduard Hoffmann. Helvetica is a neo-grotesque design, one influenced by the famous 19th century (1890s) ...
in its software design. iOS for the iPhone, iPod touch, iPad, and Apple TV employs the font, alongside its use on iPods beginning with the 6th-generation iPod classic and 3rd-generation iPod nano. In conjunction with the iPhone 4 in 2010, Apple began using Helvetica Neue on devices with Retina display, while keeping use of Helvetica on non-Retina devices. Around 2012, Apple started using Helvetica in
macOS macOS (; previously OS X and originally Mac OS X) is a Unix operating system developed and marketed by Apple Inc. since 2001. It is the primary operating system for Apple's Mac computers. Within the market of desktop and la ...
(then named OS X) application software.
iTunes iTunes () is a software program that acts as a media player, media library, mobile device management utility, and the client app for the iTunes Store. Developed by Apple Inc., it is used to purchase, play, download, and organize digital mu ...
,
iMovie iMovie (known at times as iMovie HD) is a preinstalled video editing application developed by Apple Inc. for macOS, iOS, and iPadOS devices. It was originally released in 1999 as a Mac OS 8 application bundled with the first FireWire-ena ...
,
iPhoto iPhoto is a discontinued digital photograph manipulation software application developed by Apple Inc. It was included with every Macintosh personal computer from 2002 to 2015, when it was replaced with Apple's Photos application. Originally so ...
,
GarageBand GarageBand is a line of digital audio workstations developed by Apple Inc. for macOS, iPadOS, and iOS devices that allows users to create music or podcasts. GarageBand is developed by Apple for macOS, and was once part of the iLife softwar ...
, and Apple's professional applications started to feature heavy use of Helvetica, while the majority of the OS X (now named macOS) environment retained the comparatively more legible Lucida Grande typeface, which was designed specifically for on-screen use. After the introduction of iOS 7 in June 2013, Apple began using an extra-thin weight of Helvetica Neue for the user interface of iOS 7, arousing numerous complaints about the less legible typography. For the final release of the operating system, Apple changed the system's font to a slightly thicker weight of Helvetica Neue, although some have complained that readability is still compromised compared to the font weight used in former versions of iOS. Older iOS devices continue to use Helvetica or Helvetica Neue in regular font weights that display with higher contrast on low-resolution displays. With the introduction of OS X 10.10 "Yosemite" in June 2014, Apple started using Helvetica Neue as the system font on the Mac. This brought all of Apple's user interfaces in line, using Helvetica Neue throughout.


San Francisco

San Francisco San Francisco (; Spanish for " Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the fourth most populous in California and 17t ...
is currently used for user interface across all of Apple's product line, including
watchOS watchOS is the operating system of the Apple Watch, developed by Apple Inc. It is based on iOS, the operating system used by the iPhone, and has many similar features. It was released on April 24, 2015, along with the Apple Watch, the only d ...
,
macOS macOS (; previously OS X and originally Mac OS X) is a Unix operating system developed and marketed by Apple Inc. since 2001. It is the primary operating system for Apple's Mac computers. Within the market of desktop and la ...
, iOS,
iPadOS iPadOS is a mobile operating system developed by Apple Inc. for its iPad line of tablet computers. It is a rebranded variant of iOS, the operating system used by Apple's iPhones, renamed to reflect the diverging features of the two product ...
and
tvOS tvOS (formerly known as Apple TV Software) is an operating system developed by Apple Inc. for the Apple TV, a digital media player. In the first-generation Apple TV, Apple TV Software was based on Mac OS X. Starting with the second-generation, ...
(with the notable exception of subtitles on tvOS which continues to use Helvetica). The three main variants are SF Pro for macOS, iOS, and iPadOS; SF Compact for watchOS; and SF Mono for the Terminal, Console, and Xcode applications. It was first introduced alongside the
Apple Watch Apple Watch is a line of smartwatches produced by Apple Inc. It incorporates fitness tracking, health-oriented capabilities, and wireless telecommunication, and integrates with iOS and other Apple products and services. The Apple Watch was rel ...
, where it was used for enhanced legibility and taller
x-height upright 2.0, alt=A diagram showing the line terms used in typography In typography, the x-height, or corpus size, is the distance between the baseline and the mean line of lowercase letters in a typeface. Typically, this is the height of the le ...
s for easy reading on a small display. The design references a number of different other typefaces, notably FF DIN (used in the UI of the Camera app in
iOS 7 iOS 7 is the seventh major release of the iOS mobile operating system developed by Apple Inc., being the successor to iOS 6. It was announced at the company's Worldwide Developers Conference on June 10, 2013, and was released on September 1 ...
and above),
Helvetica Helvetica (originally Neue Haas Grotesk) is a widely used sans-serif typeface developed in 1957 by Swiss typeface designer Max Miedinger and Eduard Hoffmann. Helvetica is a neo-grotesque design, one influenced by the famous 19th century (1890s) ...
(used in the UI in iOS 6 and below), Helvetica Neue (used in the UI of
iOS 7 iOS 7 is the seventh major release of the iOS mobile operating system developed by Apple Inc., being the successor to iOS 6. It was announced at the company's Worldwide Developers Conference on June 10, 2013, and was released on September 1 ...
and
iOS 8 iOS 8 is the eighth major release of the iOS mobile operating system developed by Apple Inc., being the successor to iOS 7. It was announced at the company's Worldwide Developers Conference on June 2, 2014, and was released on September 17, ...
as well as
OS X Yosemite OS X Yosemite ( ; version 10.10) is the eleventh major release of macOS, Apple Inc.'s desktop and server operating system for Macintosh computers. OS X Yosemite was announced and released to developers on June 2, 2014, at WWDC 2014 and rel ...
), Roboto (
Google Google LLC () is an American Multinational corporation, multinational technology company focusing on Search Engine, search engine technology, online advertising, cloud computing, software, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, ar ...
's new UI typeface), and Univers (used on Apple's early keyboard designs). It was widely speculated that San Francisco was going to be the long-awaited font that Apple had reportedly been developing for independent use in their products, and the font's name was leaked in November 2014 when the WatchKit SDK was released to developers. On June 8, 2015, at the
WWDC The Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) is an information technology conference held annually by Apple Inc. The conference is usually held at Apple Park in California. The event is usually used to showcase new software and technologies in t ...
2015 conference, San Francisco replaced Helvetica Neue as the system font for both macOS and iOS operating systems. The version used, known as "SF UI", was modified to make it wider than its Apple Watch counterpart, more akin to the previously used Helvetica Neue. The original version has since been renamed "SF Compact".


New York

In 2019, Apple released
New York New York most commonly refers to: * New York City, the most populous city in the United States, located in the state of New York * New York (state), a state in the northeastern United States New York may also refer to: Film and television * '' ...
, a serif counterpart to San Francisco.


Keyboards

Apple's keyboards were long labeled with Univers 47 (Condensed Light Oblique), a design choice by Apple's industrial design partner,
Frog Design frog (styled as ''"frog, part of Capgemini Invent"'') is a global creative and design consultancy founded in 1969 by industrial designer Hartmut Esslinger in Mutlangen, Germany, where it was initially named “esslinger design”. Soon after the ...
. This began in 1984 with the
Apple IIc The Apple IIc, the fourth model in the Apple II series of personal computers, is Apple Computer's first endeavor to produce a portable computer. The result was a notebook-sized version of the Apple II that could be transported from place to ...
, which had tilted front-panel buttons to match the inclination of the lettering. Univers was eventually replaced on Apple's keyboards by
VAG Rounded ''VAG Rundschrift'' or VAG Rounded (''Rundschrift'' is German for 'round typeface', short of ''abgerundete Schrift'', 'rounded typeface') is a geometric sans-serif typeface that was designed as a corporate typographic voice for the Volkswagen AG m ...
, which was used on all
iBook iBook is a line of laptop computers designed, manufactured, and sold by Apple Computer from 1999 to 2006. The line targeted entry-level, consumer and education markets, with lower specifications and prices than the PowerBook, Apple's higher-end ...
models,
PowerBook The PowerBook (known as Macintosh PowerBook before 1997) is a family of Macintosh laptop computers designed, manufactured and sold by Apple Computer from 1991 to 2006. During its lifetime, the PowerBook went through several major revisions and r ...
s introduced after 2003, and MacBooks, MacBooks Pro, MacBooks Air, and Apple Keyboards from August 2007 until early 2015. The font was developed by
Sedley Place Sedley Place is a British design agency based in Clapham, London and employees 35 designers, graphic artists, architects, web designers and account teams. History The four founding partners all met at Wolff Olins: Gerry Barney, David Bristow, Kit ...
Ltd. for German car manufacturer
Volkswagen Volkswagen (),English: , . abbreviated as VW (), is a German Automotive industry, motor vehicle manufacturer headquartered in Wolfsburg, Lower Saxony, Germany. Founded in 1937 by the German Labour Front under the Nazi Party and revived into a ...
and was used in much of their marketing materials. On March 9, 2015, Apple introduced a new generation of MacBook that utilizes the
Apple An apple is an edible fruit produced by an apple tree (''Malus domestica''). Apple trees are cultivated worldwide and are the most widely grown species in the genus '' Malus''. The tree originated in Central Asia, where its wild ancest ...
designed
San Francisco San Francisco (; Spanish for " Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the fourth most populous in California and 17t ...
typeface.


See also

*
Fonts on Macintosh Apple's Macintosh computer supports a wide variety of fonts. This support was one of the features that initially distinguished it from other systems. Fonts System fonts The primary system font in OS X El Capitan and above is San Francisco ...
*
List of Apple typefaces This is a list of typefaces made by/for Apple Inc. Serif Proportional * Apple Garamond (1983), designed to replace Motter Tektura in the Apple logo. Not included on Macs in a user-available form. * New York (1984, by Susan Kare), a serif ...
*
List of typefaces included with macOS This list of fonts contains every font shipped with Mac OS X 10.0 through macOS 10.14, including any that shipped with language-specific updates from Apple (primarily Korean and Chinese fonts). For fonts shipped only with Mac OS X 10.5, please ...


References


General references

* Apple Computer: *
Fonts on Mac OS X
Retrieved 2004-09-25. ** (January 29, 2003). ''Using and Managing Fonts in Mac OS X''
PDF
Retrieved 2004-10-01. ** (October 8, 2003). ''Fonts in Mac OS X'
PDF
Retrieved 2004-10-04. *

Retrieved 2004-10-01. ** (November 11, 2002).
LastResort Font
'. Retrieved 2004-10-03. ** (June 10, 2004)

Retrieved 2004-10-22. ** (September 14, 2000)

Retrieved 2004-10-22. ** (1996-07-06)

Retrieved 2004-10-27. ** (November 1990)
Apple II GS TN #41 — Font Family Numbers
Retrieved 2004-10-28. ** (December 19, 2002)
ROMAN.TXT, MacRoman to Unicode map
Retrieved 2004-11-09. * Jaques Moury Beauchap

Retrieved 2004-10-28. *
Michael Everson Michael Everson (born January 9, 1963) is an American and Irish linguist, script encoder, typesetter, type designer and publisher. He runs a publishing company called Evertype, through which he has published over a hundred books since 2006. H ...
(2003-11-11)
Multilingual Macintosh Support
Retrieved 2004-10-27. * Erfert Fenton (October 1994). Inside QuickDraw GX Fonts, ''MacWorld''. , retrieved 2004-11-01. * FreeType

Retrieved 2004-10-29. * Nobumi Iyanaga (2000-09-26)

Retrieved 2004-10-27. * Tony Kavadias (2004-07-24)
Apple II User Interfaces
Retrieved 2004-10-28. * Steve Gibson (2003-04-10)

Retrieved 2004-10-27. * Jens Hofman Hansen (July 2, 2002)
Apple-logoets historie
Retrieved 2004-09-22. * Susan Kare
World Class Cities
Retrieved 2004-09-25. * John Kheyt (2003-05-23)
The Devil's Advocate — MS's ClearType KOs Apple's Quartz In The Lightweight Division
Retrieved 2004-10-27. * Microsoft (2003-03-12)
Press release: Microsoft Announces Expanded Access To Extensive Intellectual Property Portfolio
Retrieved 2004-10-27. * Jonathan Ploudre (June 1, 2000)

Retrieved 2004-09-21. * Ed Tracy (1998-10-15).

'. Retrieved 2004-10-27. * Norman Walsh (August 14, 1996)
comp.fonts FAQ: Macintosh Info
Retrieved 2004-09-21. * XvsXP
XvsXP.com — Fonts
Retrieved 2004-10-27.


External links


Advanced Typography with Mac OS X Tiger

Text & Fonts
Apple's typography developer site
TrueType Reference Manual

LastResort Font
*

** LastResort glyphs:
236 pages PDF5 pages PDF


— Survey of Unicode fonts included with Mac OS X and
Microsoft Office 2004 Microsoft Office 2004 for Mac is a version of Microsoft Office developed for Mac OS X. It is equivalent to Office 2003 for Windows. The software was originally written for PowerPC Macs, so Mac transition to Intel processors, Macs with Intel CPUs ...
.
Microsoft's_
Microsoft's_ClearType
_website">ClearType">Microsoft's_ClearType
_website
Fondu
–_program_to_convert_(and_separate)_Mac_OS_X_dfont_data_fork_files_to_TrueType,_OpenType,_Type_1,_and_Glyph_Bitmap_parts
MacKeys_—_online_tool_to_convert_Apple_keyboard_keys_to_their_Unicode_equivalents_(e.g._Cmd_→_⌘)
{{DEFAULTSORT:Typography_Of_Apple_Inc. Microsoft's_ClearType
_website">ClearType">Microsoft's_ClearType
_website
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–_program_to_convert_(and_separate)_Mac_OS_X_dfont_data_fork_files_to_TrueType,_OpenType,_Type_1,_and_Glyph_Bitmap_parts
MacKeys_—_online_tool_to_convert_Apple_keyboard_keys_to_their_Unicode_equivalents_(e.g._Cmd_→_⌘)
{{DEFAULTSORT:Typography_Of_Apple_Inc. Digital_typography">Apple_ An_apple_is_an_edible__fruit_produced_by_an_apple_tree_(''Malus_domestica'')._Apple__trees_are__cultivated_worldwide_and_are_the_most_widely_grown_species_in_the__genus_''_Malus''._The__tree_originated_in_Central_Asia,_where_its_wild_ancest_...
Apple_Inc._typefaces.html" ;"title="Digital_typography.html" "title="ClearType
_website.html" ;"title="ClearType">Microsoft's ClearType
website">ClearType">Microsoft's ClearType
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Fondu
– program to convert (and separate) Mac OS X dfont data fork files to TrueType, OpenType, Type 1, and Glyph Bitmap parts
MacKeys — online tool to convert Apple keyboard keys to their Unicode equivalents (e.g. Cmd → ⌘)
{{DEFAULTSORT:Typography Of Apple Inc. Digital typography">Apple An apple is an edible fruit produced by an apple tree (''Malus domestica''). Apple trees are cultivated worldwide and are the most widely grown species in the genus '' Malus''. The tree originated in Central Asia, where its wild ancest ...
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