Typography for Mobile Devices

There is a lot of discussion amongst the graphic design community these days regarding typography and its appearance on mobile devices. Typographers have traditionally been involved in a consideration of typographic issues as they relate to print. Two of the main issues are to develop an appropriate personality to a printed piece, and to persuade the reader to purchase either the product or service being offered.

With nearly 3 billion users of mobile devices, type foundries would be wise to begin to concern themselves more with the traditional issues of typography for these smaller devices. Along with other handheld devices, Jacqui Cheng believes that, "Traditional cell phones are dull, limited, and at end-of-life. iPhone is glorious, and it is only the beginning." (http://arstechnica.com/journals/apple.ars/2007/1/19/6688) As a dedicated typographer, I wholeheartedly agree with him. I am a firm believer that the use of Times, or any “default” font is awful for onscreen reading, and lacks that personality that is so important in audience retention.

Following from the initial formats we’ve seen over the past few years, it seems to be a trend now to give the consumer the power to switch up the digital environment, with colours, ring tones, symbols, icons and this certainly applies to type in terms of creating flexibility with user-centered design, where the consumer now expects to have the ability to customize their onscreen environment as a way of creating and re-creating their identity.

It is interesting to note that in order to create a font specifically for onscreen viewing, typographers pay close attention to traditional print issues such as hinting, kerning and x-height. For example, Georgia's letter spacing makes it more readable than Times. None of the characters end up crunched against each other or pulled apart, which happens when screens generate bitmaps on the fly. This is particularly noticeable for nonstandard sizes such as 13 or 15 points. If we take a look at the issue of x-height, for example, the typographer must consider that the readers eyes must work harder to make out words (leading to potential eyestrain) if the pixels in the counters that close an "e" or round out an "a" crunch together. This is only the tip of the iceberg when it comes down to addresses the many issues which must be addressed when designing new type for smaller screens, where there isn’t the luxury of a larger size format that there is in print projects.

It’s exciting to see that traditional graphic design firms, such as Punchcut, are working in tandem more often with interactive companies. For example, Punchcut worked with QUALCOMM to design a new sans serif font. The process which was undertaken exemplifies that design firms are bringing their expertise to the table, and the end result is that font families are being designed with historical typographic principles in mind. The four-month project entailed assessing the impact of mobile devices on digital typography, and the two companies identified key requirements that would “guide the design and application of QUALCOMM’s custom interface font family, designing to meet business and customer needs within tight technical constraints, and testing to validate design decisions. The demand for custom fonts will increase apace with the desire to deliver more content and increasingly customized experiences on mobile devices.” (http://www.aiga.org/resources/content/2/0/9/3/documents/typography_for_mobile_phone_devices.pdf) To be successful in their design decisions, design firms will need to continue to focus on user-centered design and understand the impact typography will have on the consumer of the future.

Another important player in the development of typography for mobiles is an international type foundry called Monotype Imaging. As Chris Roberts, vice president of marketing suggests “We’re surrounded by typefaces in our everyday lives, yet all too often text on mobile phones looks the same – the type does not look distinctly different whether we’re running an application, game or user interface. Fonts can create powerful opportunities to differentiate products, deliver more personal, expressive user experiences and create richer, more vibrant graphical environments that are closer to the PC experience.” (http://www.symbian.com/news/cn/2007/cn20079450.html) This type of differentiation, and the power it has to attract potential consumers for businesses has been acknowledged in print for decades.

With respect to branding, Monotype’s director of marketing Julie Strawson observes that “Global brands should approach mobile communications in such a way that will ensure brand integrity and fidelity. Companies need to be able to communicate their offerings using the same branded, corporate fonts that are seen in all other media – a consistency that helps build brand strength and customer trust.” (http://www.symbian.com/news/cn/2007/cn20079450.html) With the amount of competition out there, this is an important factor. Apple’s iPhone and Treo are two further examples of companies that have thought about the user experience thoroughly, and done it right.

In October 2007, Monotype showed the public their scalable fonts at the Symbian Smartphone Show at the Excel Centre in London, which covered topics such as using fonts to enhance the user experience in ways that evoke emotion, command attention, ensure readability and make messages more memorable. Also highlighted was Monotype Imaging’s mobile solution, which encompasses “ESQ Mobile™ (Enhanced Screen Quality) fonts engineered for optimal display on mobile phones; the company’s WorldType? Layout Engine for enabling the composition, positioning and rendering of multilingual text; and Monotype Imaging’s iType font engine, a scalable font rendering subsystem based on industry-standard OpenType? and TrueType? font formats.” (http://www.symbian.com/news/cn/2007/cn20079450.html) It all sounds very complicated, but it bodes well for future solutions revolving around making better type. Print designers are currently using the OpenType? format mentioned above, which is cross-platform, and offers tons of character set options for the typesetter.

As of version 9.5, the iType font engine has been incorporated into the Symbian OS software development kit. In the near future, Monotype, traditionally a big player in creating fonts for print, will highlight how font technology can enable developers to more easily enrich user experiences and deliver crisp readability on small screens in multiple languages. In fact, Monotype technologies are combined with “access to more than 9,000 typefaces from the Monotype®, Linotype® and ITC® typeface libraries – home to some of the world’s most widely used designs.” (http://www.symbian.com/news/cn/2007/cn20079450.html) Developers who partner with Monotype will leverage this typographic expertise and scalable font technology to ensure easier to use and more stylish user interfaces.

In my research into this topic, I was amazed at just how many professional typography sites and blogs have articles on the subject. Many also have type family samples which apply directly to mobiles. For instance, Typophile’s website has a sampler of the Droid family. (http://www.typophile.com/node/39036) It looks much like what we are used to seeing for type specifications for the print market. There are plenty of typographer’s opinions out there, including one which I found to be familiar amongst fanatical typographers: “…the font that’s used for the standby ‘screensaver’ clock, Series 60 ZDigi?, is just utterly vile. I don’t get why product designers have this obsession with making high resolution full-colour LCD screens look like ancient 7-segment displays. The numbers in Nokia Sans are perfectly readable and reasonably attractive (for a standby clock, it would be just fine) but instead the phone uses this horrid thing and you can’t change it.” (http://www.ministryoftype.co.uk/words/article/mobile_phone_typography/) This is not an atypical response from those in the design profession, whose interest in typographic matters tends to rest in the minor details. The notion of readability, legibility and appearance that typophiles apply to print are equally relevant to small screen devices. It’s just that more often than not, the designers of these screens seem to be more focussed on the technology of the screens themselves rather than the user’s experience of their visual nature.

No discussion of typography and mobile devices would be complete without a brief discussion of a multinational alliance of thirty-four leading technology and wireless companies called the Open Handset Alliance, who joined forces to develop Android, the first open platform for mobile devices. Some of the more famous companies include Google Inc., T-Mobile, and Motorola. Ascender Corporation, which is helping to design Android’s interface, has engineered a new set of system user interface fonts named “Droid” for the platform. The fonts will not only be highly legible, but also have an extensive set of styles and language support. The Droid family consists of Droid Sans, Droid Sans Mono and Droid Serif. Each contains extensive character set coverage, and the Droid Sans regular font includes support for Simplified and Traditional Chinese, Japanese and Korean language systems.

To a typophile, this sounds like heaven. The professionalism of this new type of font design lies in the complete description of the type family. For instance, when deciding which characteristics to incorporate from the Droid family, the user has the option to click and see the type family at its various sizes and multiple styles. This has traditionally been the realm of the type specimen book for fonts bound for print, and is a great improvement on the limited default types of Arial and Verdana that we’ve seen until recently.

President of Ascender Corporation, Ira Mirochnick states that, “We believe that handset manufacturers, wireless carriers and application developers will be very happy with the fonts provided and we look forward to addressing the future font needs across the platform.” (http://www.typophile.com/node/39036) So it seems that manufacturers of mobile technologies are becoming more interested in the soft and visual aspects of user interfaces and are paying more attention to the importance of type as a communicator of identity that goes beyond the immediate meaning of the words themselves.

It’s interesting to note that as an industry, the companies who are making the devices are still engineering focussed, as opposed to experience focussed. Fonts have a tremendous ability to add personality and visual impact to almost all mobile content, from applications and games to messaging and branded marketing campaigns, and therefore have a direct impact on communication and the creation of identity. One of the most visible results of the Macintosh and personal computer revolutions has been the ability to use the thousands of different available typefaces in documents. With the realization that the user experience is becoming ever more important, we see more and more the options that are becoming available to smaller screens, bringing with it the realization that there are ways to display text on small screens that more aptly complement the personality of the user.

WORKS CITED

Benson, Jared, Olewiler, Ken, Broden, Nancy. “Typography for Mobile Phone Devices: The Design of the QUALCOMM Sans Font Family.” 2005. <http://www.aiga.org/resources/content/2/0/9/3/documents/typography_for_mobile_phone_devices.pdf> Accessed March 29, 2008.

Cheng, Jacqui. iPhone interface analysis from an actual usability expert. Gasp! January 19, 2007. <http://arstechnica.com/journals/apple.ars/2007/1/19/6688> Accessed April 6, 2008.

Guard, Damien, “Droid font family courtesy of Google & Ascender.” November, 2007. <http://damieng.com/blog/2007/11/14/droid-font-family-courtesy-of-google-ascender.> Accessed April 2, 2008.

Hallmundur, Aegir: Ministry of Type. “Mobile Typography 3.” November 2007. <http://www.ministryoftype.co.uk/words/category/C8/P7/> Accessed March 29, 2008.

Symbian. “Monotype Imaging Launches Guide to Mobile Typography at Symbian Smartphone Show.” 2008. <http://www.symbian.com/news/cn/2007/cn20079450.html> Accessed March 30, 2008.

Open Handset Alliance. --- November 2007. <http://www.openhandsetalliance.com/press_110507.html> Accessed March 30, 2008.

Smashing Magazine. --- March 2008. <http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2008/03/20/60-brilliant-typefaces-for-corporate-design/> April 2, 2008.

UIQ Technology AB, "UIQ Developer Community." 2008. <http://developer.uiq.com/> Accessed April 2, 2008.