fonts/Inter-UI 3.19 NetBSD

Interface started out in late 2016 as an experiment to build a perfectly pixel-fitting font at a specific small size. The idea was that by crafting a font in a particular way, with a particular coordinate system (Units Per EM), and for a particular target rasterization size (11), it would be possible to get the best of both sharpness and readability.

However after a few months of using an early version of Interface, it dawned on everyone exposed to the test that this approach had some serious real-world problems. Most notably that it was really hard to read longer text. Because of the pixel-aligning nature of that approach, the font took an almost mono-spaced appearance, making it really easy to read numbers, punctuation and very short words, but eye-straining to read anything longer.

The project was rebooted with a different approach, sticking with the specific UPM, but crafting glyphs and kerning in a way that made for more variation in the rhythm and smoother vertical and horizontal stems.