There’s a lot of amateur criticism going around about Google’s new default font for Android phones, and personally I think the analysis is a bit misguided – there’s a bit of truth to the criticism sure, but I don’t think people are seeing the big picture. Here’s a comment I made about my view on Roboto, as originally posted on this Ars Technica article:

I think a lot of people don’t understand typography, and Google should have just omitted that detail [from their Icecream Sandwich announcement] completely – I know they’re proud of it but all the “variant of Helvetica” talk is just annoying; really with that logic Arial would be a variant of Helvetica to most people as well.

Additionally – yes, you can overlay characters and say “look at how close they are!” but a typeface is really a lot more than just the characters – for example, the kerning and kerning pairs (space between letters) are much tighter in Roboto, which really plays a huge role in how a font reads. In body copy Roboto feels completely different from Helvetica, and becomes easier to read at smaller on-screen sizes (it seems to be just a hair heavier than Helvetica as well). Here’s a quick demonstration in body copy for skeptics out there: http://imgur.com/TCPH5 – they’re not as close to each other as a simple character analysis would lead you to believe. I imagine readability was a huge factor for the Google team, and in my opinion they can go ahead and hang the “mission accomplished” banner on this one.

The criticism of Roboto thus far is kind of like the criticism of a car’s body without any inspection into how it handles on the road; sure maybe it’s a bit ugly up close – but in the end it’s all about the drive.

This was a bit of a ramble, but as someone who works with type daily I get annoyed by somewhat amateur criticisms of typography from tech columnists. It’s a bit silly to get annoyed by it, sure, but it’s my job.

Sure, maybe up close it’s a bit ugly – I won’t argue against anyone saying that – but overall I think the most important factor in this case, readability, has really hit the mark.