To that end, I created BonMot, an attributed string generation library for iOS. As I began collecting my thoughts for this post, I decided to try to abstract away much of the complexity and confusion surrounding iOS typography, and make it easier to use. Developers: quit whining and build something beautiful! TL DR: BonMotīy the end of the project, we had managed to reproduce all the effects from the designs, but our visual styling code had grown sprawling and repetetive. And now, we pass that learning on to you.ĭesigners: please show this post to your developer friends if they say that iOS typography is too complex. Instead of getting the designs “close enough,” we learned the components of iOS typography required to replicate the designs pixel-for-pixel.
IOS 11 SYSTEM FONT HOW TO
To that end, I set out to understand how to replicate, in iOS, all the advanced typographic effects that are possible in Adobe Illustrator and similar design tools. But as I talked with Raizlabs designer Matt Lawson about his designs for the iOS app we were building for Undercover Tourist, I learned the reasoning behind each of the design decisions he made, and I didn’t want to ignore any of them. You know the drill: designers create their masterpiece, developers can’t (or don’t have time to) implement it all, we haggle over the details, and meet somewhere in the middle. Here is a more detailed description of the techniques from the talk, including a few extras that I had to cut for time. Original Post:Īt the fourth Raizlabs Lightning Talks, I described how you can stop saying “no” to designers who ask you to reproduce advanced typographic effects on iOS.
Check out the blog post introducing BonMot 4, which includes a link to the migration guide.
BonMot, the library mentioned in this post, has received a significant update, and the code samples presented here are no longer valid.