Standout font

[ThatOneCalculator]

ref conversation: https://github.com/GrapheneOS/os-issue-tracker/issues/2506#issuecomment-1883993408

Roboto where possible. Noto as fallback. Exception typography: The Bold variant is preferred over the Regular variant for headings.

While Roboto and Noto are both great for readability, it feels like GrapheneOS is missing a "standout" font -- a font that can be used for titles, major headings, and UI elements that demand attention like lockscreens. Standout fonts should be unique, captivating, and not necessarily "normal" (as in, it immediately grabs your attention but wouldn't really be comfortable to read for more than a word or a couple numbers).

Do any of the fonts in https://github.com/GrapheneOS/os-issue-tracker/issues/2506#issuecomment-1883980138 get somewhat close to vibe of what GrapheneOS is trying to go for in terms of brand identity?

[lokesh-krishna]

What's the Pixel implementation of a "standout" font? I know they offer a variety of lock screen clock styles but do they use something distinct for the other examples that you mentioned (titles, major headings, etc.)?

[thestinger]

We don't currently plan to do this because we can't use the fonts used by Google and we don't really want to choose a particularly unique looking font right now.

[ThatOneCalculator]

Why not at least let users load in a variable weight font of their choosing?

[thestinger]

That doesn't fit the security model and rolling that back is the opposite of what we do.

[ThatOneCalculator]

I'm not sure how giving users to load a font from their own phone is a "security issue", unless there's some malicious TTF font that's been discovered....

[thestinger]

Fonts can be malicious both with and without vulnerabilities involved. Font rendering has a lot of attack surface. It would provide another way to persist access on the device without involving an app. It's the opposite of the kind of feature we would add. If it gets added to AOSP, we're not going to remove it, but we avoid adding that kind of attack surface especially for something the vast majority of people would never use. In general, we will not add any feature that the vast majority of people will never use but if it introduces non-trivial attack surface that absolutely rules it out. We'll only add niche features if they have a lot of value for what we're trying to provide. Giving people a way to slightly tweak the aesthetics of the OS doesn't fit into that.

[thestinger]

You could potentially convince us to change something about the fonts to more closely match the stock Pixel OS but that would mean finding a font meeting all the requirements we'd have for it including localization and licensing which matches the same kind of thing they're doing with the fonts and also subjectively looks better to a large majority of people.

[ThatOneCalculator]

Fair. I'll have to do some digging then, or if I find the time/motivation make my own font(s). However, as far as localization goes, afaik pretty much everyone in the world uses 0-9 & : for numbers on stuff like digital clocks?

[thestinger]

This is closed not because we're entirely against the idea but because it doesn't make any specific, concrete proposal which we can evaluate.

Fair. I'll have to do some digging then, or if I find the time/motivation make my own font(s). However, as far as localization goes, afaik pretty much everyone in the world uses 0-9 & : for digital clocks?

If you're only referring to the clocks specifically, then you could make a list of open source fonts which you think are worth adding, ideally following the same kind of options they offer on the stock OS, and either you or someone else also has to figure out how to integrate them into the OS and test it before we would consider testing it ourselves and accepting it if it meets our standards.

[boredsquirrel]

To my knowledge, the requirements are:

• free, permissive license (no GPL)
• scalable
• bold, cursive
• all languages supported

[1fexd]

Hanken Grotesk looks quite good imo