pico-quorum

v2: fonts, side by side

Five candidate font sets against today’s, first on a specimen card, then on six real approval screens. Same screens, same pixels, only the fonts swapped: every picture is the real firmware in the emulator (the Pico’s 240×240 panel, shown here at 1.5×). Back to the v2 plan.

My pick: Inter, disambiguated, with Atkinson Mono kept for addresses. It needs some layout fixes, listed below. The safe pick is IBM Plex: it swaps in with no layout changes at all. Details and questions at the end.

The sets

Set Words Addresses and hashes Why try it
Today Atkinson Hyperlegible Next Atkinson Hyperlegible Mono Made for telling look-alike letters apart
Inter Inter Atkinson Mono The clean, neutral look of most modern apps
Inter, disambiguated Inter with its ss02 alternates Atkinson Mono Inter, but I, l and 1 are all different, and 0 is slashed
Space Grotesk Space Grotesk JetBrains Mono More character, a bit “crypto”
IBM Plex IBM Plex Sans IBM Plex Mono Engineered and calm; the same widths as today’s
Manrope Manrope Atkinson Mono Round and friendly

All six are SIL Open Font License, from Google Fonts. Every set keeps today’s seven sizes (12–28 px) and the 16-shade anti-aliasing.

The specimen

Each card has a headline, body text, a title, an address, a row of look-alike characters (Il1| O0o rn m 5S 8B 6b), the verify code and a button line. What the row shows:

The screens

The queue

Inter and Space Grotesk run wider, so row #3 is cut: “Refused · bad ha…”. Plex and Manrope fit.

The summary

Send: an address to compare

The address uses the mono in every set. Only Space Grotesk (JetBrains Mono) and Plex (Plex Mono) change it.

Verify: the hash and the code

A red page: text that wraps

The body text wraps differently by width. Every set fits here, but Inter and Space Grotesk carry more words onto the last line, and Plex breaks exactly like today.

Refused

Space Grotesk loses the end of the message: “entirely.” falls off the page. The layout has room for four lines here, and Space Grotesk needs five.

What choosing each one means

Set Fits today’s layouts? Look-alikes Work
Today yes all apart none
Inter no: longer rows get cut, and wrapped text runs longer I = l out, unless disambiguated
Inter, disambiguated no, same as Inter all apart give the queue rows and the wrapped text more room (part of the v2 redo anyway)
Space Grotesk no: text falls off a page I = l out
IBM Plex yes all apart none: regenerate the fonts, done
Manrope yes I = l out, and the tight spaces

Questions for you

  1. Inter (disambiguated) or Plex? Inter looks the most current. Plex is a drop-in. Or say “neither” and I’ll try more (Geist, DM Sans, Figtree, Public Sans…).
  2. Mono: keep Atkinson Mono for addresses (today), or try Plex Mono or JetBrains Mono with whichever sans wins?
  3. Headlines only? A middle path: the new face for headlines and titles, Atkinson for body text. Say so and I’ll shoot that too.

Run it yourself

GF_DIR=/path/to/google/fonts uv run --with pillow python tools/fonts/gen.py --try   # the candidates' glyphs
tools/quorum shots --fonts inter,interd,grotesk,plex,manrope                        # the screens in each set
uv run --with pillow python tools/fonts/compare.py                                  # specimens and these grids
tools/emu run fontspec                                                              # the card live; A = next set