blog 2. typography

Typography for mobile phone devices: The design of the QUALCOMM Sans font Family.

In 2004 Punchcut worked with QUALCOMM to develop a typographic strategy with respect to QUALCOMM’s custom user interfaces within its mobile operating system and applications. The first tangible expression was the design of a custom family of sans serif fonts to e used in current and future QUALCOMM mobile user interfaces.
Up until this project QUALCOMM had not formally evaluated a forward-thinking font or typographic strategy with respect to user interfaces within its mobile operating system. QUALCOMM understood that font usage issues were becoming more critical to delivering an effective and appealing user experience.


The primary brand goal was to provide QUALCOMM with a font family that was distinct from its competitors, thereby enhancing the company’s position as a thought leader in the mobile phone UI space.

Once the H and O were designed, repetitive text settings were composed in different widths and sizes to explore how to design a bold weight that maintained the same width as the regular.

Punchcut is working with QUALCOMM to extrapolate outline-based truetype font files for use on the mobile device. This will allow a much ricer experience as the natural jagginess of the pixilated curves is replaced.
Screen resolution is getting higher and expectations are rising. There are still yet a number of typographic sensitivities that can be brought to the mobile device that will only serve to enrich the user experience such as italics, short caps, expert glyphs, embedded symbols etc.


http://www.aiga.org/content.cfm/typography-for-mobile-phone-devices-the-design-of-the-qualcomm-s