San Francisco is an iconic city for many reasons: its bay, the Golden Gate, its nature and even the fun Cable Car that seems taken from another era. It is a place with a personality of its own.
But Apple gave San Francisco an extra meaning. Do you know which one? Being the technological heart of California and thanks to Steve Jobs’ great eye for detail, in addition to his time in some very special classes at university, “San Francisco” ended up acquiring a new use: becoming another reference point, a silent legacy within the Apple experience.
Design at the heart of Apple
At Apple, design has always worked as a language of its own: it communicates without explaining, guides without imposing and creates a sense of coherence that is noticeable even when it is not named. Many decisions go unnoticed precisely because they are well resolved.
Steve Jobs argued that design was not only how a product looked, but how it felt to use. This philosophy is reflected in everything: the hardware, the animations, the way a product is presented… and also in aspects as apparently minor as packaging. The teams in Cupertino even had people dedicated exclusively to testing the experience of opening a box, because every gesture had to be consistent with Apple’s language.
And if there is one element that is everywhere without perhaps receiving all our attention, it is typography.
The importance of typography
Typography is not a minor detail. Since Steve Jobs attended calligraphy classes at university, which he himself acknowledged as decisive, Apple has always paid special attention to typography. Every curve, every weight, every space… Understanding that the shape of a letter could convey elegance, clarity or coherence, feel colder or closer, was a turning point.
Discovering the value of composition, the visual weight of a letter, the beauty of white space and the difference between a functional typeface and one with character led the original first Macintosh to surprise us with typography that was not only readable, it was pleasant. It stopped being an unimportant detail and became part of the product. Something very unusual at that time.
Over the years, Apple changed typefaces as its systems and screens evolved. From the mythical Chicago of the first Macintosh, each one reflected the available technology and Apple’s character at that moment:
- Geneva, very present in the classic interface identity.
- Charcoal, linked to the aesthetic leap of Mac OS 8.
- Shaston and Espy Sans in more technical and portable environments
- Lucida Grande, during much of the life of Mac OS X.
- Podium Sans, in the Apple TV environment.
- Helvetica Neue, which defined the visual tone of iOS in its most minimalist stage.
San Francisco as a silent language in Apple
There came a point when Apple was building a family of devices with sizes so radically different, from an Apple Watch to the 5K display of an iMac, that, in addition to transmitting and fully integrating into what Apple’s aesthetics are, text had to work equally well on all sizes and screens. For that reason, Apple’s design team took charge of creating its own typeface. And what did they call it? San Francisco.
Thus, since 2015, San Francisco is the official typeface we see in all the company’s operating systems, the lettering that accompanies every interaction with our iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch and Mac. And its variants (SF Pro, SF Compact and SF Mono) accompany us in macOS, iOS, iPadOS and watchOS, and even in development applications such as Terminal or Xcode.
Steve Jobs and the science of small details that make the difference
Another important lesson from Steve Jobs (who did not hesitate for a second to play a prank with the first iPhone): an almost invisible change can make a big difference. Just as a small detail in the curve of an icon makes a system more pleasant to use, a typeface designed for readability, closeness and coherence elevates the entire experience. We may not consciously notice that we are reading in San Francisco, but we do perceive the harmony it communicates.
The creation of San Francisco was the culmination of years of learning about how each letter can be part of a device’s identity. And today, San Francisco is more than a typeface. It has become a standard that represents the evolution of the company.
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