Noto is Google’s quest to create a universal font that supports every language and character on all types of modern devices such as smartphones, digital screens, etc. without compromising on the design, quality and rendering.
Noto mean no more tofu. Tofu is little squares that are being rendered when a font is not being supported by a system. Google’s objective is to create a single font that will eliminate tofu completely.
Noto, the result of five years work, is being publicised as one of the largest typeface projects in human history, in which Google collaborated with Monotype to create a unifying system that supports more than 100 writing systems, 800 languages and hundreds of thousands of characters including languages that has never been digitalised before, and has existed as inscriptions on stone on ancient documents.
Noto Sans Thaana
Google officially released Noto Sans Thaana on November 12, 2014. During the engineering and design process we had the opportunity to collaborate with Google by providing feedback on the design.
It all started when a Ahmed Faras added me to an email thread in 2013 about a Thaana font being developed by Google. Since a modern Thaana font was very much needed for the Maldivian community, we very much liked the initiative by Google, and decided to put our best efforts to not make this typeface the next MV Boli.
MV Boli was introduced by Microsoft with Windows XP to support Thaana script. Even though Boli was pre-installed on all Windows versions since XP, Boli became an infamous font that no one wanted to use.
By the time we joined the Thread, version 5.00 of the font was being presented, which looked very similar to MV Boli.
By December 2013, Google finalised Version 6.00 of Noto Sans Thaana by considering the feedback sent. In our opinion the typeface did not look good and wasn’t ready to be released to public.
After reviewing Version 6.0 of the typeface, we realised that we need to dive into this a little bit more.
We started by looking into the fonts that are currently being used. In a research done by Jawish Hameed (Jaa) in 2009 on Thaana fonts (Thaana Common Fonts Research), over 250 different fonts was identified and the most popular 3 fonts identified were Mv Boli, A_Faseyha & A_Waheed. Out of these 3 fonts, Mv Boli was the only unicode font.
The full list of Fonts are available here: http://labs.jawish.org/cfr/
Even though Mv Boli was the most popular Thaana font, It’s widely hated by the community for the cheap handwritten style, which even led to a petition on Change.org asking Microsoft to replace the font with a better font.
The other 2 fonts, A_Faseyha & A_Waheed is not unicode based, but we do have seen the unicode version of these 2 fonts named MV Faseyha & MV Waheed. These 2 fonts are usually being used together, where Faseyha is used as body text and Waheed is used for headlines and titles due to It’s bolder weight.
As of December 2013, Noto Sans Thaana still looks like a hand drawn font, it needs modern cleaner glyphs in order to be used as a universal font across different devices.
By looking at the typeface, we realised the font was designed with the glyphs of MV Boli in mind.
After trying the font for a while we found out that diacritics are not center aligned to the letter and there were lot of inconsistencies in calligraphy.
Diacritics
We found out the diacritics in Noto Sans Thaana is kind of left aligned, which
makes it hard to read. Diacritics looks more readable to the eye when centered to the letter.
Calligraphy
One of the main issues identified with Noto Sans Thaana is that compared to existing typefaces, Noto Sans Thaana looks more hand written style.
Lettes in Thaana can be divided into three main style of letters. Having a consistent look within these styles can help Noto Sans getting rid of
the hand written style.
style 1 — letters are smaller than other letters. equal width and height.
style 2 — bottom part of all characters looks similar.
style 3 — bottom part. equal width and height.
We also shared version 7.x with our colleague Adam Zubin, a prominent media designer based in Maldives to get some feedback.
Over all the typeface has more uniform spacings between the letters and accents seems to be well adjusted in relation to the letters than existing dhivehi fonts [this is great news as it will allow designers to further fine-tune the diacritics to achieve a well aligned/tighter font]. Provided the type style to have a marker/handwritten style, the font lacks consistency between the individual types/letters. The main issues I noticed are the variations in the baseline and the angle individual types.
Baseline variations
When compared to english letters our baseline varies a lot depending on the letter for e.g the first 5 from the right above and the letters with decenders [orange transparent solid].
Suggested solution
To have 2 consistent baselines, one for the descending letters and another for letters at x height. This way we can minimise the variations.
Type angle variations
Current types lies in the range 45.52° to 52.86° from 90°
Suggested solution
To have a consistent mean angle from 90° with a minimal variation.
I think the above 2 suggestions/details will minimze the inconsistencies between the individual letters and further allow more uniform spacings to give a clearer holistic looking font type functionally and aesthetically
After months of redesign iterations Google finalised the first version of Noto Sans Thaana based on the build 802.
What’s next?
Noto Sans Thaana hasn’t been updated in 3 years. No major updates has been published since initial release.
We’ve not seen this typeface being adapted anywhere. Websites and apps are still using a combination of MV Faseyha & MV Waheed. This also proves that there is potential for Noto Sans Thaana, since there is no single Thaana font that provides different weights, hence the combination of 2 fonts.
Google has done an outstanding job with Noto Sans Thaana, and we’re very thankful. We can see a huge difference when comparing the current version of Noto Sans Thaana with the very early version of Droid Sans Thaana.
The font is still in Alpha stage, hence not available on Google fonts, but can be downloaded from Noto website: https://www.google.com/get/noto/#sans-thaa
If you would like to contribute, join the discussion here on GitHub: https://github.com/googlei18n/noto-fonts/issues/399
Noto Sans Thaana on Web
To see If the font can be used on web, we tested the font by embedding to a website. As you can see below, It’s still difficult to read compared to other typefaces available.
Demo: https://kodefly.com/preview/noto-thaana/
Contributors
All the feedbacks we provided came from our designer Inad. In addition to us, our colleagues below has provided numerous feedback to Noto Sans Thaana and It will not be what it is today without the contribution from everyone listed below.
