Apple is known for their attention to detail and producing stunning user interfaces. Recently I found a nice typography touch in the Mac OS X interface that got me really excited.
I think any designer is familiar with term “ligatures”. For those who are not, here is the definition from Wikipedia:
In writing and typography a ligature occurs where two or more letter-forms are joined as a single glyph. Ligatures usually replace two sequential characters sharing common components, and are part of a more general class of glyphs called “contextual forms” where the specific shape of a letter depends on context such as surrounding letters or proximity to the end of a line.
Most popular ligatures are “ff”, “fi”, “fl”, “ffi”, “ffl” and “fft”. Here are some examples:
Now, take a look at some elements of Mac OS X UI:
Yes, they use ligatures system-wide! For me it’s an amazing discovery. I think 99.99% of Mac OS X users don’t care about such details, but they definitely care about the whole experience. And such small design and typography touches make the whole user experience much better. I want to share with you my favorite quote from Scott Forstall, Apple’s vice-president of Platform Experience:
I actually have a photographer’s loupe that I use to look to make sure every pixel is right. We will argue over literally a single pixel.
(Apple’s New Calling: The iPhone at Time)
10 Comments
Big whoop that the menus look nice. How about making the USER more capable?
Howzabout when I type “efficient” (or another word that looks awful in most typefaces, e.g., Times) in a document, that the ligatures, if they exist in that typeface, be automatically displayed? … And that the spellchecker doesn’t choke on the goofball “spelling,” that indexing still works, … Otherwise, this is a tiny piece of eye candy with most results just as bad as MS Word under windows.
Walt French — January 22, 2007, 11:18 am
Well, when I’m writing “efficient” in this comment field I see ligature. Not every font have ligatures, so it’s fine that you don’t see them sometimes.
Eugene — January 22, 2007, 11:38 am
By default ligatures will be automatically used if the font supports them. There is no problem with a spell checker, indexing, etc. because ligatures only affect the APPEARANCE of the word and not the actual letters that make up the word. You can experiment in TextEdit by using the Format->Font->Ligature menu to turn ligatures on and off in a font like Times.
Scott Harrison — January 22, 2007, 11:50 am
Not always good. Try typing liters per minute as l/min and see what ligatures can do!
Kamal Mubarak — January 22, 2007, 2:08 pm
I should add that it changes from font to font. Try in TextEdit with Times and Times Roman
Kamal Mubarak — January 22, 2007, 2:13 pm
Yeah, I noticed this while typing the other day. The only one I could find was ff though, and I didn’t know it was called a ligature. It’s nice to know Apple put these little touches in the Operating System, and that people notice and appreciate them.
Matt — March 2, 2007, 2:17 am
Ok, I am a graphic designer and yes this is really nice.
However, it is not so amazing. Show me an ‘Q’ with a Tail that wraps back over the word, and then you will get me to go wow, ‘real’ ligature support. OSX’s ligature support is barely beyond kerning offsets.
In comparison, Windows 2000 even supported these basic Ligatures, like OSX does. Let’s demand a bit more from OSX and Apple, they need to give us ligature support like in Microsoft added in Windows Vista, which can do the flowing tails and has extensive ‘dramatic’ ligature font support throughout the OS.
TheNetAvenger — May 23, 2007, 12:58 am
I would like to use the common ligatures of Oe as in Oedipus or oedema. or ae as in aedis christi in word for mac or windows: can anyone ofm you brainy typography experts tell me how to do that? thanks
simon kayt — June 25, 2008, 6:31 am
Who and/or what is Simon Kayt?
Eva McKay — February 18, 2010, 2:16 pm
wildbit.com’s done it again! Superb post!
Amos Mccormick — May 27, 2010, 12:45 pm
Write a comment