back to article Nokia's fontastic Pure wins 'design Oscar'

Nokia Pure - the "humanist sans" typeface of the Finnish mobemongerer - has won the graphics category of this year's UK Design Museum Design Awards. The Nokia Pure typeface Nokia Pure was unleashed on an astounded world last year amid much whalesong and joss-stick fug. The font's creator, Bruno Maag, described his …

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  1. Bob Vistakin
    Unhappy

    As pure as an innocent virgin

    Beautiful, elegant, admired by all, but lost in the woods. Then along came a pack of vicious wolves, led by a shrieking hyena, to rip her to bits and take the cherries from her basket.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: As pure as an innocent virgin

      WTF?... You get out much?

      1. Graham Dawson Silver badge

        Re: As pure as an innocent virgin

        Possibly too much.

  2. Dave 126 Silver badge

    After a quick flit through the link in the article...

    I note that an update to http://www.reghardware.com/2009/06/24/folding_uk_plug/

    The folding plug (in micro USB charger form) is now in production.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Meh

      Re: After a quick flit through the link in the article...

      Shame the production design is almost nothing like the original idea. But I guess that's what happens when a plug designed by an art student comes up against engineers that actually know about electricity and stuff.

  3. Jeebus

    I see a letter I in there.

    It's patent time.

    1. Paul Crawford Silver badge

      I see a letter H in there.

      It's Hammer time!

  4. jai

    don't like it

    for some reason, it really bugs me the way the tall lowercase letters are taller than the uppercase ones. surely it just adds to the confusion when reading a work that starts with an uppercase i followed by a lowercase L

    1. Ragarath

      Re: don't like it

      Well for a start what they have there wis not Whalesong it is WhaIesong (note between the a and the e on the second it is an upper i not a lower L)

      Measured it compared to the alphabet above on the same image.

  5. ScissorHands
    Trollface

    Techies dismissing what they don't understand

    Yes. Oh yes. I'm going there.

    Anyway, the Nokia N9 also won an award for Interaction Design. But that Nokia is dead. Nokia's font is now SegoeWP.

    1. Ilgaz

      Use on Android

      Ironic that you can use the font on Android right now as long as you get a customizable launcher such as go launcher. No kind of hack required.

      Nokia idiots are still wondering why their mass switch to win from symbian plan didn't work. Eh, they (including me) switched to Android no matter how much they hate google. Google and Android partners should pay a bit to that idiot Elop for service.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Techies dismissing what they don't understand

      To be fair, the Segoe UI family are beautiful fonts too.

      1. Ilgaz

        Font is OK unless you dislike it

        I actually like segoe too. My point was, you can't change ui font on win unless you hack it. The company who brought most advanced customization of ui ever (still no equivalent, it is vector based) switched to an operating system which you can't change basic font.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: Font is OK unless you dislike it

          I like Segoe too. Because every time I see a website written in it, I know it's Microsoft or one of their apologists, and I can go away quickly.

  6. David Black
    Meh

    How much?

    Surely everything in Nokia has a price tag on it now before the firesale begins, how much for a font? Couple of grand? Maybe they could just go back to making really tight nearly indestructable phones, I'm sure there's money in that?

  7. Paul Crawford Silver badge

    "crank up the cetacean ambient CD to 11"

    Class!

    1. Risky
      Thumb Up

      Re: "crank up the cetacean ambient CD to 11"

      I think we might have another Reg Unit here.

      The "Cetacean Ambient CD Scale" ranges fro 0-11 and measures the new-age-conceptual-BS level of a company presentantion.

      I demand this is used in all article covering this sort of thing from now on.

  8. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Yeah, bullshit ahoy but it is a nice looking font and works equally well on screen, in documents and on mobile.

    1. Tom 7

      You can read it then

      It does look remarkably like an old line printer font from the late 70's with slightly shorter UC letters and ten tons of marketing bullshit.

      Are nokia so desperate they are trying to claim copyright on the alphabet now?

      A rose by any other name....

      You may say I don’t understand - but if wetting your pants on fonts rather that what is written with them is your bag I'm glad.

      1. Some Beggar
        WTF?

        Re: You can read it then

        Are nokia so desperate they are trying to claim copyright on the alphabet now?

        Ummm. Fonts have been commercial licensed products for ever and ever. Nokia didn't invent that.

      2. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: You can read it then

        "...if wetting your pants on fonts rather that what is written with them is your bag I'm glad."

        I'm more likely to wet my pants over Arial than the words you write in it.

  9. Robin Bradshaw

    Comic Sans would be more befitting the company.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      I think they should re-adopt the old symbian.org font. Nobody's using that at the moment for whatever reason, and it would be suitably emblematic of Nokia's market standing at this time.

  10. Avatar of They
    WTF?

    It's a font...

    It's a font. It's a ****ing font. Am I the only one that thinking that out of all the wonderous designs in the world, Font's are so fricking low down on the scale of anything that this is just stupid?

    It is a wonderous design it is basically Arial or courier or verdana with some longer and thinner bits, there is no unique design element to it.

    What next, people being classed in design awards for corporate power point presentations or anything drawn in visio? In which case I would like to nominate one of the ladies in my marketing team for her very nice new image of rebranding that will be released in October. It is a wondrous symmetry the letters in the name, and a differing colour from our parent company.

    Is Nokia just desparate for anything with headlines nowadays? Or has MS jus started buying entry into everything?

    1. Antidisestablishmentarianist

      Re: It's a font...

      Heathen!

      Typography is awesome.

      However the kerning on Whalesong is shit, or do I detect some photoshoppery there......

      1. Ragarath

        Re: It's a font...

        Well for a start what they have there is not Whalesong it is WhaIesong (note between the a and the e on the second it is an upper i not a lower L)

        Measured it compared to the alphabet above on the same image.

        1. Richard 120
          Big Brother

          Re: It's a font...

          @Ragarath that's a seriously good spot. I had not noticed until you pointed that out.

          Your comment is rendered in a font where it's actually impossible to see the difference, there is a slight difference in this new font, but you have to look closely, which kind of breaks it in my opinion.

          It also makes a mockery of Magnus_Pym and his comment about specific characters being visibly different.

          I award you a Big brother icon for observation.

    2. Magnus_Pym

      Re: It's a font...

      True. It's just a F**king font but it does make a difference. At least the number one and a lowercase letter L are visually different.

    3. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: It's a font...

      Let's kick this off properly.

      As I recall there was one IT mover and shaker who ascribed his appreciation of good design to a typography course that he took, so Steve Jobs would have joined in the applause I am sure.

      1. Tom 7

        But Steve Jobs' fonts are so old hat nowadays....

        style is transient - you paying for it seems permanent. No progress there.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: But Steve Jobs' fonts are so old hat nowadays....

          Yeah. Garamond is so out of date and looks daft nowadays. Oh wait...

    4. Ilgaz

      Re: It's a font...

      Please learn to respect the art forms you don't understand or learn about them online.

      1. jukejoint

        Re: It's a font...

        "...please learn to respect..."

        no thanks. blow it out your blowhole. please learn to respect that others think it's just an effing font.

  11. thefutureboy
    Go

    Red rag to a bull

    Typeface discussion on El Reg is like a speed camera discussion on a motoring forum. Or like a speed camera discussion on El Reg for that matter...

    1. amanfromearth

      Re: Red rag to a bull

      Or *any* discussion on El Reg..

  12. Richard Wharram

    Quite partial to...

    ...the Ubuntu font family myself. Even in Windows :)

    It's just a nice font. I'm not trying to be ironic.

    1. Audrey S. Thackeray

      Re: Quite partial to...

      Lucida Console brought an improvement to my life.

      1. Richard Wharram

        Re: Quite partial to...

        Lucida Grande certainly makes desktop Facebook a more pleasant experience.

    2. Some Beggar

      Re: Quite partial to...

      I write perl in wingdings. I'm font hardcore, me.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Quite partial to...

        I've abandoned visual programming. Now I just shout my code down a phone line in binary.

  13. Dotter
    Facepalm

    Did the Design Museum really just award a design award to something they termed as having as little design as possible?

    Words fail me.

    1. Ilgaz

      Didn't you hear the new fashion? Dumb down everything, over simplify, remove working features.

      Nokia should also get a Turing award for giving up an excellently working operating system designed for mobile and switch to silverlight demo ui.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        > Nokia should also get a Turing award for giving up an excellently working operating system designed for mobile and switch to silverlight demo ui.

        Don't you mean a Darwin award?

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      "I have designs on the designers' over-designed design."

      Some day you will realize that the same word can have different meanings in different contexts.

      Shocking, I know, but true. Perhaps words fail you because you don't understand how to use them.

  14. Rob 30

    bloody fonts

    looks like arial to me, i'm obviously not "design-ey" enough to appreciate it, all i want from a font is maximum legibility, what the fuck else matters when it comes to fonts??

  15. IronSteve
    Thumb Up

    I like it

  16. James Wheeler
    Thumb Up

    "... amid much whalesong and joss-stick fug."

    Best sentence I've read all week. Thanks for the smile.

  17. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    It's all just UPPERCASE and lowercase -- time for a real font revolution by introducing a new case.

    <rushes off to file a patent>

    1. Euripides Pants
      Gimp

      Re: new case

      You're too late, Wingdings has been around a while....

    2. piran

      ...time for a real font revolution by introducing a new case.

      Yup ...call it staircase.

  18. Wang N Staines
    Happy

    Redesigning letters on a sinking ship.

  19. flibbertigibbet
    Pirate

    @Ragarath: that's a seriously good spot

    +1, an unbelievably good spot that destroys the integrity of, well, someone. I wonder if the award is based on a fraud?

  20. Martin Budden Silver badge
    FAIL

    Form over Function

    Verdana and Georgia were designed specifically for screen use: they scale well and are easily readable at any font size, whereas most other fonts are difficult to read at smaller font sizes because the detail gets mangled by the screen's pixels.

    Years later Nokia still haven't learned this important lesson and are more interested in ripples on a pond than pixels on a screen. Oh dear.

    1. Michael Wojcik Silver badge

      Re: Form over Function

      Yes, but Verdana is oddly proportioned. The x-height is quite large, compared to most other fonts; and the letters are in general significantly larger than other fonts at the same point size. Some readers find it distracting or unpleasant, and there's the widespread problem of web sites specifying Verdana and then a smaller-than-default font size to compensate for Verdana's sprawl.

      Choosing fonts solely because they're visible at small sizes is, for many applications, unnecessary, since users can generally resize text if they need to do so. And typographical aesthetics are functional as well; people who think they aren't clearly haven't paid attention to the research in this area.

      Georgia isn't too bad.

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