First things first: MIDI Guitar is and remains an outstanding product, many thanks for your relentless efforts to refine it!
And now a suggestion from someone working as a graphic designer: Looks matter. A lot. So I think it’d be worth it reconsidering your UI font choices. The Optima (or Optima-like) font is not good in readability and also a somewhat old-fashioned looking choice for your state-of-the-art product. Also, all-caps for more than the main titles does not help readability.
For the sake of visual clarity I’d suggest to rely a bit more on system design guidelines concerning fonts. If it where up to me (which it is not), I’d change both fonts you use for something more in line with Apple’s guidelines and better reflecting the utter coolness of MIDI Guitar.
Even if the two go together in design: practicality should take precedence over beauty.
The font from the large screen to the small smartphone should above all be clearly and quickly recognizable, especially in live operation on stage, in order to enable safe actions during the game when switching or controlling pedals.
Lettering in only capital letters is still very easy to recognize, especially in small font sizes, which is why this has become a standard for the labeling of Boss pedals, for example.
For this reason, I suggest that at least with very small font sizes, the font should be in capital letters only, preferably space-saving sans serif in “Small Condensed”.
I think you’re not alone in this, Dutti67, it’s an universal sentiment. The reason is that deciphering an all caps sentence requires so much unnecessary effort that an aversion arises to read it in the first place.
Rockwell is not a good choice for UI design — way to static with it’s giant, blocky serifs. And please abstain from Comic Sans and the like. You wanna draw attention to the functionality of the app itself, not to funny letter shapes.
Maybe you should check out the many versions of Apple’s “San Francisco” and use just one font family in different weights.
Just to add to the topic
These 4 text types should describe all common font applications:
A) Reading text: the main text in books, magazines, manuals, etc. with the relevant information.
B) Consultation text: This supplements or explains the reading text (examples: footnotes, captions)
C) Display text: This structures the reading text or serves to emphasize it. Examples: Headings
D) Signalization text: This is used for orientation, often only individual words (examples: labels on devices, safety instructions)
I refer to category D for the main words of the MG 3 application. By the way, in MIDI GUITAR 2, everything in category D was capitalized and apparently nobody minded.
Longer texts for explanations or tool tips should of course be displayed in the usual upper/lower case.
The smaller, bolder and less clear the font is, the more difficult it is to read. This reduces the readability distance considerably, depending on the font. This also applies to the use of lower case letters. These are more difficult to read at a distance than capital letters, as the individual letters are more clearly distinguishable from each other when capitalized. This reduces the legibility distance from lower case letters to upper case letters by approx. 50%.
I guess you mean why visual consistency and recognition is important for a brand (e.g. Jam Origin)?
Well, that would be a long and winding answer I don’t have time for right now, but you might want to take a look at Apple, Nike, BMW, UPS etc.
Just one quick quote:
“A brand is the set of expectations, memories, stories, and relationships that, taken together, account for a consumer’s decision to choose one product or service over another.”
Seth Godin
Visual consistency would fit the expectations pocket.
But I’ll be just as happy being able to make my personal font decisions.
