mobile application fonts call for help

Tags: Design,  Mobile applications,  Mobile web
April 17, 2008 by Barbara

We’re putting together a listing of mobile-optimized fonts, both vector and bitmap. We’ll publish it on the wiki, but would like your help!

Please comment with resources or links or info if you have especial experience with:

  1. Font design for mobile screens

  2. Mobile font selection criteria

  3. Implementing fonts for mobile web sites

  4. Implementing fonts for mobile applications (looks like BREW and MIDP3 have font managers and MIDP2 does not)

  5. Mobile font rendering engines—especially how to use one if you are not a manufacturer!

  6. Bitmap fonts

(yes, we’ve got the Punchcut/QUALCOMM case study)


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4 Comments »

  1. Barbara,

    STEP Magazine came to us asking some similar questions about the unique challenges of designing for handheld screens. The resulting article is available online, which shares some of the design considerations for mobile type design and selection: http://www.stepinsidedesign.com/STEP/Article/28766

    Monotype is working on (or has developed) a font rendering platform for the BREW runtime.

    Comment by Joe Pemberton — April 17, 2008 @ 6:06 pm

  2. i would recommend the tahoma and ms sans and the lucida fonts for mobile phones .The font can be changed by using app like fontremover . it works fine in my mobile

    Comment by ranjith gomez — April 17, 2008 @ 9:18 pm

  3. Hi Barbara.

    I have a little bit of experience in this area. On java ME devices, there is no choice of fonts, only the system font in 3 set sizes and no installable fonts. We implemented our own bitmap font rendering engine when I worked with games. Its not hard as long as you don’t try to do anti-aliasing. In fact, almost all game publishers uses their own font rendering.
    MIDP 3 will have installable fonts and good font control, but that’s a year ahead.
    There is also a writeup about mobile fonts here: http://sender11.typepad.com/sender11/2008/01/prototyping-mob.html

    Morten

    Comment by Morten Hjerde — April 21, 2008 @ 1:09 am

  4. You know,I am using mobile application fonts and I have to admit-it’s cool.

    Comment by Free Fonts — January 18, 2010 @ 2:50 am

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