I like how one of the testimonials is someone at Adobe basically quoting the copy at the top of the page.
"OPTICIAN SANS: A free font based on the historical eye charts and optotypes used by opticians world wide." - top copy
“A free typeface based on opticians’ eye charts” -Khoi Vinh, Principal designer, Adobe
arcticfox · 15h ago
I think all the testimonials are fake, if this wasn't clear to everyone. I thought they might be real at first but none of them exist. I actually thought that was kind of shitty to do, since they use real companies and media outlets.
(I don't really follow fonts but I do know there is a subculture crazy about them, so I thought it could be theoretically possible that people would write reviews of them).
jrockway · 27m ago
I clicked the Fast Company one because the quote seemed most fake to me and it was a real article. I learned that the underlying problem here is that eye charts only have like 10 letters on them, and this font attempts to guess the rest so you have a full alphabet.
Rendello · 14h ago
You can click them, they link to their sources.
piker · 14h ago
> "Hmm...this page doesn’t exist. Try searching for something else."
It indeed looks like a real quote then, but not much of a testimonial. It may as well be rephrased, "Optician Sans is a thing that I acknowledge exists." Nowadays I suppose that's good enough reason to put up the logo of a company on the landing page.
morkalork · 9h ago
Same energy as:
>I Heartily Endorse This Event Or Product
hn_go_brrrrr · 9h ago
I'm Commander Sheppard, and this is my favorite store on the Citadel.
jaysonelliot · 13h ago
I work for Khoi. I should ask him if he really gave this quote.
tim-- · 9h ago
From the designer's website (https://anti.as/optiker-k) it seems that this was commissioned by ANTI Hamar for the rebranding project for Optiker-K, a Norwegian optician and optometrists store.
This is fantastic! More custom fonts like this should be open sourced.
To me the font looks pretty legible. Worth noting that the font is from 2018, so it's not really a new font, but it is still one of my favorites.
OMG I kept thinking my glasses (progressive lenses) were causing that. I didn't realize it was animating.
GuinansEyebrows · 17h ago
probably to evoke the feeling of undergoing an eye exam.
dylan604 · 16h ago
I can hear the tech asking "number 1 or number 2"
somat · 5h ago
It's probably just me being a huge introvert, but I dislike saying "I am not sure do it again" more than twice and am always left a bit discontent wondering if the prescription is as good as it should be.
I wish I could book 30 minutes alone with the machine and just dial it in perfectly myself.
jrockway · 20m ago
It's worth finding an optometrist that you have a good rapport with for that reason. I got lucky and get along really well with the person that I see; the results are worth speaking up for.
(I had two somewhat persistent problems before I started seeing her... One was that my prescription was focused a little before infinity because the sign is 20 feet away and not infinity feet away. We tweaked some stuff and fixed that problem. The other was that if I'm tired and it's pretty low contrast outside, I always see double. We added some extra prism for that and it's helped a lot. I've had the same prism prescription for 30 years but adding more was a noticeable improvement.)
bonoboTP · 1h ago
Once I felt like I'll be really attentive and answer confidently, and in the end I got overminused. The hesitation is part of the signal. If it's 1% sharper, even if you can tell which one is 1% sharper, you gotta say hmmm number 1 is a bit better but just a little.
Adding -0.5 to the diopter will often make the distance noticeably sharper in appearance while not really giving you more lines you can read, it's a sensation of sharpness but not really more info. And for that you a price because near vision will require straining your eye muscles to accommodate, and that will often cause headaches and tiredness after reading or working at a monitor.
That's horrible, the full page blur is less bad since it's so obvious. But man, you should never be intentionally gaslighting the user by making them second-guess their own vision.
Orygin · 1h ago
The full page blur is horrendous. Every navigation to the page triggers it, so if you click and link and hit back, here's a blurry page for 2s.
It also nearly triggers headaches for me, so clearly the webdesigner should not be hired for anything serious...
gadders · 18h ago
Nice font. Could have done without the dude's tinder profile pic though.
dylan604 · 16h ago
You know you swiped right.
I had the same odd sentiment about the use of the images as well. It does nothing for me about wanting to use the font.
gadders · 2h ago
:-) Not my target market, but I'd be interested to hear how it worked out for him.
edwinjm · 18h ago
That’s how Nordic people look like <grin>
dogmatism · 11h ago
Nah
Atkinson Hyperlegible from the Braille institute is the way if we're going for fonts from vision experts
For those that now find themselves inspired to type the Snellen E, the internet provides an OFL typeface that scratches your itch here¹ (this unclearly licensed modification² even comes with some cute but barely readable lowercase versions of the letters)
that C is annoyingly O-ish, and the blurring... feels almost like its made by an anti-optician
jamesdwilson · 17h ago
it was derived from eye charts that are explicitly designed to find defects in your eyes - it is not a coincidence the O and C look similar.
artemisart · 14h ago
Yes I don't understand how they can claim it's optimized for legibility when the base font does the inverse.
jantissler · 16h ago
And there are also alternative versions of many letters as shown further down on the page.
Telemakhos · 11h ago
There's an alternative, more squarish C; about half the letters have alternative glyphs. If you're using macOS Font Book, scroll down to the bottom of the repertoire to see the alt glyphs.
graypegg · 18h ago
Huh, so I'm only just learning that the Snellen chart isn't the common one! I wouldn't have known the name of it, but if someone asked me to doodle an eye chart from memory, I would've drawn that blocky E with the serifs! I've most likely been tested with the sans-serif Sloan chart I assume, but the letter forms just aren't distinct enough to stick in my brain I guess. A bit of a shame this font doesn't have a "Optician Serif" variant to look like the Snellen letters.
sandbach · 17h ago
Always amusing to see spelling errors on painstakingly put together design websites. Unless NRK did indeed mean 'Let us all behave like opticians!'
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amdivia · 13h ago
The loading animation made me feel in need of a visit to my optician
srameshc · 14h ago
I am looking for a very readable font and I like it. I am not in anyway qualified to compare it to Source Sans Pro or Opensans which I believe are considered very read friendly.
htk · 12h ago
Nice font, I wish it had lower case letters as well. It looks like it could be a great fixed width font for coding.
ayaros · 11h ago
I love this so much! I sent it to my Dad, who's an ophthalmologist. Hopefully he gets a kick out of it.
voxleone · 14h ago
Really like this typeface. It hits that rare sweet spot between experimental and functional. Big thanks to the ANTI Hamar team.
"OPTICIAN SANS: A free font based on the historical eye charts and optotypes used by opticians world wide." - top copy
“A free typeface based on opticians’ eye charts” -Khoi Vinh, Principal designer, Adobe
(I don't really follow fonts but I do know there is a subculture crazy about them, so I thought it could be theoretically possible that people would write reviews of them).
- the link under discussion
>I Heartily Endorse This Event Or Product
This is fantastic! More custom fonts like this should be open sourced.
To me the font looks pretty legible. Worth noting that the font is from 2018, so it's not really a new font, but it is still one of my favorites.
For example [0], you should indicate the direction where the E points to.
[0]: https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/61MRfRwHwWL._SL1235_.jpg
https://optician-sans.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/Comp-3....
I wish I could book 30 minutes alone with the machine and just dial it in perfectly myself.
(I had two somewhat persistent problems before I started seeing her... One was that my prescription was focused a little before infinity because the sign is 20 feet away and not infinity feet away. We tweaked some stuff and fixed that problem. The other was that if I'm tired and it's pretty low contrast outside, I always see double. We added some extra prism for that and it's helped a lot. I've had the same prism prescription for 30 years but adding more was a noticeable improvement.)
Adding -0.5 to the diopter will often make the distance noticeably sharper in appearance while not really giving you more lines you can read, it's a sensation of sharpness but not really more info. And for that you a price because near vision will require straining your eye muscles to accommodate, and that will often cause headaches and tiredness after reading or working at a monitor.
I had the same odd sentiment about the use of the images as well. It does nothing for me about wanting to use the font.
Atkinson Hyperlegible from the Braille institute is the way if we're going for fonts from vision experts
1] https://radagast.ca/snellen/snellen.html 2] https://mk.bcgsc.ca/snellen-optotype-font/
They made a Medium post as well: https://medium.com/anewtypeofinterference/completing-a-typef...
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But my cataract problem is getting worse, and I may have to bump the size up yet again. I have yet to find another font I like as well.