Mobile Typography — Typophile archive

J-Gray3 August 2009 · 19:03

I just recently got myself a new mobile phone. It is an LG enV Touch. I was going through the settings and noticed that there are 5 different menu fonts to choose from, VZW Font, LG Serif, LG Edge, LG Joy, and LG Script. I'm sure this isn't the first phone to have this but I have to admit, I was impressed. Even though I'm sticking with VZW font which is a clean sans serif and the default on the phone, it's nice to have options.

I did a little bit of searching and from what I can tell it isn't possible to upload your own fonts but I could certainly see that in the future. It's an interesting possibility to say the least.

Zara Evens4 August 2009 · 18:33

I think it will be a long time until phone manufacturers are going to allow users to upload their own fonts (this has to do with processor speeds, memory and other issues), but you technically could do it currently with a couple of different devices - but only if you know how to hack into them. With iPhone for instance, this is possible with a Jailbreak.

Allowing users to customize their own font choices on a mobile phone is scary territory and it can make a UI fall apart completely, as well as leave the text unreadable. It could be like MySpace x10.

Most new phones have a couple of different font choices, sometimes they are just different styles or if you are lucky, entirely different designs. I'd say 9 times out of ten, they are all horrible and poorly considered for the mobile context.