Apple has always been famous for the elegance and quality of its designs. From hardware products to the smallest details of the operating system, Apple’s engineers and designers are recognized as Carthusian blacksmiths of beauty.
The fonts also, as from the taste of the Deux ex-Machina Steve Jobs, have always been a driving part of the Macintosh computer operating system, the beauty, and elegance of the typographic art combined with the simplicity of the window system. With them was born the information revolution that led to all current modern operating systems.
That said, beauty and elegance are not Apple’s exclusivity, on the contrary, recent times have brought extraordinary examples well outside the world of Apple. However, the thing that pleases us most is to notice extraordinary examples in the open-source world and, in particular, in the ones related to Linux.
Ubuntu Font. The way typography is used says as much about our brand as the words themselves
One of the most interesting examples is the dedicated fonts of the Linux distribution called Ubuntu: form and function in the sign of elegance.
The Ubuntu typeface has been specially created to complement the Ubuntu tone of voice. It has a contemporary style and contains characteristics unique to the Ubuntu brand that convey a precise, reliable and free attitude.
Ubuntu typography
The Ubuntu font family is a set of matching new libre/open fonts. The development is being funded by Canonical on behalf of the wider Free Software community and the Ubuntu project. The technical font design work and implementation are being undertaken by Dalton Maag.
Both the final font Truetype/OpenType files and the design files used to produce the font family are distributed under an open license and you are expressly encouraged to experiment, modify, share and improve. The typeface is sans-serif, uses OpenType features, and is manually hinted for clarity on desktop and mobile computing screens.
The scope of the Ubuntu Font Family includes all the languages used by the various Ubuntu users around the world in tune with Ubuntu’s philosophy which states that every user should be able to use their software in the language of their choice. So the Ubuntu Font Family project will be extended to cover many more written languages.
Let’s see how to install Ubuntu fonts on old and new macOS
First, you need to go to the Ubuntu Design website and download the archive containing all the font files. It is an open-source product and it is in the public domain, so you are free to use it without any restrictions on your system.
You can go here – https://design.ubuntu.com/font/ -, read a little and learn more about Ubuntu fonts then download them to your Macintosh, or download them directly from this link – Download the Ubuntu Font Family | https://assets.ubuntu.com/v1/0cef8205-ubuntu-font-family-0.83.zip -.
Once you have downloaded the Ubuntu font archive file in the Download folder, double click to unzip it and find yourself with an Ubuntu-Font folder containing all the necessary files. Now, you can drag and drop the whole folder – or only all the files with a .ttf extension (True Type Font) – to the folder containing all the new added fonts on your Mac: USER>Library>Fonts.
If you can’t find the Library folder, you can select it directly from the Finder’s Go menu. To do this: switch to the Finder, press and hold down the Option Key (ALT KEY for Linux and Windows users) on the keyboard, then from the Go menu, select Library, and the Library folder should be opened.
After that, all your applications on the Mac should be able to use the Ubuntu fonts.
Resources and references
Ubuntu font and typography – https://design.ubuntu.com/font/
macOS Big Sur | Apple desktop operating system – https://www.apple.com/macos/big-sur/
The only reason the Mac looks like it does is that Steve Jobs loved typography – https://www.businessinsider.com/robert-palladino-calligraphy-class-inspired-steve-jobs-2016-3