The Story Behind SitePoint’s New Typeface: Roboto

You may have recently landed on SitePoint or SitePoint Premium and paused for a moment, tilted your head slightly and thought “Huh, something is… different.”

You’re right. Something is different, and we’re a bit excited about it. Drumroll, please…

As part of a gradual design refresh we’re conducting here at SitePoint, we’ve refreshed the typeface we’re using across the brand. Welcome, Roboto 🎉🎉🎉

A Subtle Change, for Good Reason

Even though not everyone can tell the difference (including our Head of Content, Ophelie), we didn’t just change to Roboto because it looks pretty. We had previously been using Helvetica Neue across the board - it’s tried and true, safe and clean. Unfortunately, we ran into problems when staff and contributors around the world, on different machines, didn’t always have access to the font. Helvetica Neue is a beautiful font, but it costs a fair bit — it wasn’t feasible!

After a flurry of conversations within our team, we landed on Roboto. It’s a largely geometric (falling into what is referred to as the ‘neo-grotesque sans-serif’ family, like Helvetica Neue) but retains gentle curves and open counters which helps with readability, while also providing a friendly personality to the typeface. Of great importance, too, is the fact that Roboto is a Google Font under the Apache 2.0 License. That means that any and all of our staff and contributors,around the world, can find and use it without hassle. Nice!

We’re really loving it so far. What do you think?

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by Kat Bak via SitePoint