This is awesome. With this new beautiful, strong font acting as a multiplier of the huge competitive advantage they got by opting for Windows Phone 7, both iPhone and Android are doomed.
Nokia is a global company that does many tens of billions of dollars a year in revenue. Believe it or not, they did not commission a new typeface to impress Reddit and HN. This is not part of their plan to take on iOS and Android. So, I don't understand the point you're making with your comment. Are you suggesting that everything at Nokia come to a complete standstill until they can placate smartphone pundits?
It's just frustrating that, just because we don't "like" Nokia, we can't talk about the actual story; everything has to be a referendum on WP7.
FWIW, Apple redefined mobile computing while using an off-the-shelf font. Helvetica, no less.
The actual story is goofy no matter how you slice it. If someone wants to take a little potshot at WP7, where's the harm? We're really losing out to the vast and deep discussion that would otherwise be happening about Nokia's profoundly important piece of R&D here?
It's goofy as long as Nokia is truly a company facing a precipice.
The first thing Steve Jobs did when he got back to Apple was utterly gut the company of every single project that wasn't advancing the company's future. That's how you come back from the brink.
Or you design fonts. It just feels like moving around deck chairs to me. They don't have the luxury of dicking around on fonts. When your house is on fire, you don't pause to fold your socks.
It's goofy as long as Nokia is truly a company facing a precipice.
Is this true?
I know they dropped the ball recently on smart phones but they still have a big market on dumb/feature phones. And there's a whole world of people who don't use or want a smart phone.
Taking a status quo position and building their business around a commodity that was hot 10 years ago doesn't seem like the right way to guarantee Nokia's future.
It has with his faith in Nokia's sound strategy and competent management. I am implying Nokia has a focus problem, he says it's normal and perfectly sane. If it is, he would be willing to bet on the company's recovery.
He didn't even mention the soundness of Nokia's strategy or the competence of their management. What he said is the same thing I'm saying: I don't see what any of the stuff you're talking about here (Windows Phone 7, the company's overall strategy, the company's management) has to do with the Nokia Pure typeface. What does a font have to do with the company's focus? Are you suggesting they should have put Bruno Maag to work on OS development and instead they wasted his talent on type design?
> He didn't even mention the soundness of Nokia's strategy or the competence of their management
I assumed that was implied in the defense of the visual identity reformulation.
> I don't see what (...) Windows Phone 7, the company's overall strategy, the company's management has to do with the Nokia Pure typeface.
Nothing and that's the point. Why waste focus on a visual identity overhaul? Was it broken?
> Are you suggesting they should have put Bruno Maag to work on OS development
This is a false dichotomy. Why hire Bruno Maag in the first place when they, yes, need to hire developers (hardware and software) so they can make phones they can sell?
No, you're presenting a false dichotomy — I was just pointing it out. Having Bruno Maag design a typeface does not in any way prevent Nokia from hiring developers, and doesn't appear to be a major company-wide focus.
Nokia's problem is that it doesn't know how to compete with Google and Apple, not that it's resource-starved. Blindly throwing money at developers without an intelligent vision is how Nokia got into this mess to begin with.
When Apple redesigns its website or switches corporate typefaces, do you complain about Apple's abhorrent lack of focus? No. The people designing the website are not the ones who develop your software, so the iPhone didn't suffer from the redesign. The same is true of Nokia. This typeface doesn't make their hardware or software any better, but it also doesn't make it any worse — it's unrelated.
> Nokia's problem is that it doesn't know how to compete with Google and Apple
I would point out that visual identity has very little to do with it.
> not that it's resource-starved
That pressure will increase in the future.
> Blindly throwing money at developers without an intelligent vision is how Nokia got into this mess to begin with
I agree with that - just throwing money on the problem won't make it go away. They hired an outsider (Microsoft) to give them a coherent vision. They should act on it.
And yes, redesigning every printed material and web presence is a small fraction of their overall budget, but is a loss of focus nevertheless and hardly an irrelevant expenditure.
Erik Spiekermann isn't very happy about the new typeface. He did the original, and says this one is bland [1]. Though it is, the old face was shockingly dated and needed replacing [2].
Nokia Pure is a nice readable typeface, very appropriate for use on mobile devices, elegant in it's own way - but too bland. They should've saved some money and just said "Frutiger".
When I saw the font, I got the feeling it hadn't changed much. Then I compared it to the old one, and I realized it's completely different, but it just gave the same feeling. In other words: very good job.
Looks good, a little bit toyish, though. The endings of the letters look like they are rounded. I prefer the stylish seriousness of Helvetica Light on the iPhone, but that's a matter of taste.
I can't believe what I'm reading here. That font is awful. The x-height is too short in terms of ratio, the counters are squashed, the stroke width is far too fat. It looks totally clunky on my screen. And that page design?! Show some love Nokia!
Why? I really liked (and still like) the one they used up until now [1]. It looked fancy, it was _really_ distinctive, and it had a great readable font for devices (e.g. screenshot [2]). What more do you need from a typeface?
P.S. Doesn't this new typeface somehow remind you of Windows Phone 7's one?
* Spiekermann's face is distinctive, but also dated; Spiekermann himself draws a comparison to Rotis in the PDF spec for the face.
* The face is complicated. Look towards the back of spec book for whole pages set in it. It draws a bit of attention to itself.
* In the same vein: it's complicated enough to require a serif and "wide" variation to make it work in all the settings Nokia needs type. Don't underestimate how annoying that may have been for people working at Nokia. One company I worked with ditched an identity that used Mrs. Eaves and Futura (which looked awesome, I thought) because no normal person could make a document look good in it.
The new face is all these things in reverse:
* It's trendy (yeah, to the point of being boring)
* It's simple
* It's all-purpose
And sure, at the end of the day, maybe they just wanted to refresh for the hell of it.
Also: remember that the cost to re-do all their docs in a new visual style will probably dwarf the cost of getting a face commissioned. If they were going to refresh the identity anyways (that's just something companies do once or twice every decade), and the cost of a Dalton Maag typeface is a tiny part of that, why not?
All arguments valid, but I still kinda like the old typeface more.
It's true that it has too many variations, but probably the new one will have as well. I doubt that only 3-4 variations will exist, there'll be more - for devices, for logos, etc...
A refresh of the identity is a must every once in a while, it's the only explanation I see why the old one should be changed ;), but I doubt that their old docs will be redone in the new corporate branding, only the currently used will be redone and the new docs will use it.
Just to be clear: the original face appeared to have multiple variations required within a single system; you were expected to know when to use the serif (!) face, and when you needed to use the wide sans (because the normal sans face has lots of fine detail that doesn't work in adverse environments).
It wasn't just that they had "display type" and "copy"; users of the Spiekermann face might have needed to know a fair bit of typography to make things look good in it. It was intrinsically complicated, beyond the complexity of Nokia's needs.
They probably spent a lot of resources to develop this font and didn't even bother to move the "Our new typeface" headline a pixel or two to the left so that it looks like it's actually left-aligned with all the other text.
Chrome 9.0.597.83 beta for Linux does not do a very good job with the kerning on that page. Not sure if it's bad hinting or just poor rendering, though.
That is because you are looking at Arial or sans-serif, not at "Nokia Pure Text"... assuming you did not download and install the font on your computer. Check the .css:
font-family: 'Nokia Pure Text', Arial, sans-serif;
The only thing that is "Nokia Pure" on the web page is the .gif images of the sample text.
This is an insurmountable problem with branded fonts; they only work if you load the branded font on every computer that will ever brush up against it. This means your Word documents will look like crap when you send them to an outside company. This means your web site that proudly uses the font will look like... umm... some generic sans-serif font when you use it on your web page.
The problem is insurmountable because, to fix the problem, you will have to convince everybody in the world to install it on their machine, which will require you to release the font for unrestricted use. A custom company-branded font with unrestricted use is an oxymoron.
Chrome supports @font-face, so kwantam is looking at Nokia Pure. I think that CSS feature goes a long way in dealing with the problems you listed - at least for webpages.
Not only is this problem not insurmountable, it's mostly solved. For websites, HTML5 @font-face is the solution. For distributing documents, PDF has it handled. The only piece of the puzzle that isn't here yet is creating documents with a font you don't actually have — and that space, I think, is intentionally left blank.
I know there are others out there (Microsoft, Android, etc.) but I do not like corporate branded fonts. I'd much rather they choose a more creative name and open it up for much broader use.
Many companies have house typefaces, and, if you're going to do that, you might as well have the page that says you got Bruno Maag to do it.
Really, when you get to the size of a company like Nokia, you're inevitably going to have an enormous marketing budget just for the boring stuff, like printing costs and designing the N+100th version of your N+100th product's N+5th slick. These are marketing dollars that are getting spent not out of ego, but simply to keep the train on the tracks.
Compared to those expenses, no matter how much it costs to engage Dalton Maag, it's still probably a rounding error.
Wouldn't you rather live in a world where big companies occasionally gave excellent typographers interesting problems to work on, rather than paying someone to round the corners on FF Meta or something?
I agree, actually, it is just that the timing seems rather bad. But of course they can not put their marketing staff on hold until they have a product worth marketing for...
> you're inevitably going to have an enormous marketing budget
If your products are actually good and/or desirable, you may discover that the marketing budget can be reduced and the surplus money be used to develop the next generation good and desirable products.
You missed my point, which is frustrating, because I lawyered up my (simple) point with a whole lot of extra words exactly to avoid this unproductive branch of the discussion.
Good people can be corrupted by bad influences over time. The douchebaggery on HN is at all-time highs and good people are being sucked in. I've got enough karma to spare that I'm happy to be downvoted to oblivion on this, but it's really got to stop.
Stop correcting people's grammar and spelling, stop assuming incompetence in others, stop nitpicking single words/phrases in thoughtful comments, and stop willfully misreading what others write (which is what happened here despite Thomas's deliberate efforts to avoid that very thing).
My comment was mostly about focus. Nokia has one single problem: they need to build phones people actually want. They have to develop the phones people will want in 2012 right now so they are shipping and working very well (Apple's iPhone has somewhat raised expectations) in 2012.
Elop used the burning platform metaphor. If it's burning, the sole focus of the whole company should be on building a new one.
A new corporate font is not a competitive advantage, will not make whatever new platform they build with WP7 more attractive to end users and is, thus, a waste of time and resources. The cost of having a font designed is tiny when compared to the cost of reformulating the visual identity of the company, something that's bound to happen.
Marketing should worry about selling as many current phones as possible and nothing else.
I can't see how a new corporate font fits in this panorama.
Because whether or not you like the fact that they chose WP7, they still have to publish many thousands of slicks this year, and they still have to have a website, and it may be worth it to have a coherent visual identity across all of them.
Your take on this baffles me. It's like you think the only functions in a multi-billion dollar company are the ones nerds care about.
The Bengals have crappy-looking helmets. They are also a crappy team. They should fix the helmets. Also the team. But the two don't really have a lot to do with each other; the Bengels still bring in millions of dollars, despite losing all the time. Meanwhile, let's make sure we're talking about the helmets when we mean to talk about the helmets, and the teams when we mean to talk about the teams. Because people make fun of people who judge football teams by their helmets.
> Because whether or not you like the fact that they chose WP7
Nice straw man. My argument is platform neutral. Nokia should focus on building phones it can sell. I would question their sanity even if they had chosen Android.
> It's like you think the only functions in a multi-billion dollar company are the ones nerds care about.
No. Their only function is to create value for shareholders.
Your analogy is flawed. Nokia has not a visual identity (or helmet) problem - quite the contrary - their phones look good, their printed materials and website look good. They have a product roadmap problem. S60 seems inadequate for current smartphone standards, which is tragic, because all things point to a smartphone-only market in a couple years. S40 is even more doomed in that scenario and MeeGo was going nowhere. They chose to go with WP7 and it will be hard enough to pull that off (it would be had they chosen Android, WebOS, MiraclePhoneOS or a mutant Symbian from an alternate future).
And yet, they decide to change their visual identity.
It's like Twitter, in the fail-whale days, deciding their problem was their logo and changing it to a green octopus instead of solving their scaling problem. Because, after all, cool logos are what sells stuff.
Just look how much free publicity Apple gets by having a legion of dedicated fans. Imagine how much money they'd need to get that kind of media/social media coverage if nobody liked their products.
And yet Apple still has a huge marketing budget (which really should be even bigger, except they put their storefronts in a separate part of the budget). I mean, yes, you need to allocate money differently depending on your market position, but large companies spend a lot on marketing, whether they're Apple or Nokia.
So I don't understand your point. Nokia spends a lot on marketing. Apple spends a lot on marketing. Nokia has a house typeface. Apple has a house typeface. Is it just "I don't like Nokia's products"?
