Ubuntu changing its look [LWN.net]

Ubuntu changing its look

Posted Mar 4, 2010 8:35 UTC (Thu) by drag (subscriber, #31333)
In reply to: Ubuntu changing its look by joseph_mayer
Parent article: Ubuntu changing its look

Oh, and besides that they don't even look alike. There are simularities, like with the point on the lower case 'u' and how the lower half of the 'b' shape looks.

But the porportions of the shapes, relative thinknesses of the lines to the size of the font, and most of the other shapes are different. For example the 't' is very different.

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Ubuntu changing its look

Posted Mar 4, 2010 16:58 UTC (Thu) by drag (subscriber, #31333) [Link]

Yeah. Like I said they are different. The shapes are different, the porportions are different. There
is simularity in how the points on the 'n' 'b' and other shapes are, but otherwise they are
different.

Ubuntu changing its look

Posted Mar 4, 2010 17:25 UTC (Thu) by joseph_mayer (guest, #61137) [Link]

If you look closely at the comparison you'll immediately see
that the designer of the Ubuntu logo took DTL-Prokyon as the
starting point of his design. He changed a few Bézier curves
here and there, but that's not enough to call it a different
and original design. Hell, even the hight of the horizontal
line of the »t« is identical.

Ubuntu changing its look

Posted Mar 4, 2010 20:04 UTC (Thu) by drag (subscriber, #31333) [Link]

Maybe he did use it as the starting point for his new point. Maybe not. I suppose you could ask him. There hundreds of thousands san serif fonts all over the place. They all follow the same basic structure and have similar elements.

Google'ng around for 'san serif' you can find lots of fonts that are very similar, but have different heights, shapes of the o's are all different, or thinknesses, or the 't' is different. So on and so forth.

On these two fonts the opennings are different shapes. The letters go to different heights. The 't' is completely different. The 'U' is capitolized as Ubuntu is a proper noun, but in the font you pointed out the capitalized versions are very different hieght and use different shapes then the lower case ones. Notice how in order to get the horizontal line in the 't' to line up the other guy had to make all the other lines in the fonts be offset from each other. The bottom of the 't' does not line up, neither does the top. So on and so forth. Not to mention they are completely different shapes.

While the one you pointed out may have inspired the ubuntu font, there is no way that these are the same ones. When the Ubuntu guy releases the ttf files for the font in a few weeks then you will be able to have a more solid comparison.