Creating Nutanix Soft

Back in 2015, we decided to venture into type creation as part on improving a critical design experience that most users would never consciously notice: Our typography was not fully optimized to render properly.

The need of a custom Typeface

On smaller devices and lower resolution screens, our previous typeface—Proxima Nova—had some issues. This wasn't just a visual inconvenience; it was a fundamental barrier to continue to explore a system that could encompass desktop and mobile experiences..

Typography isn't just about aesthetics. It's the silent communicator of information, the invisible bridge between complex technology and human understanding.

Inspiration and Exploration

We didn't just want to replace the typeface. We wanted to create one that embodied Nutanix's design philosophy by retain our brand's playful, rounded personality and making sure that it render crystal-clear across all devices.

Legibility was an important goal in this exercise. It was also a good opportunity to address some rendering issues we faced in the past with our font rendering by properly aligning the glyphs to the baseline, we solved an issue that we had in our product for years and relied on a css hack.

Proxima Nova: Familiar and approachable
San Francisco: Modern and clean

The Meticulous Crafting Process

Crafting Nutanix Soft was a meticulous process. We embarked on an exhaustive analysis of over 12,000 character variations, refining letter shapes to achieve optimal readability. By addressing sub-pixel rendering issues on mobile screens and striking a balance between geometric precision and brand expressiveness, we created a rounded font that authentically embodies the Nutanix Visual style.

Go to playground ->

Back in 2015, we decided to venture into type creation as part on improving a critical design experience that most users would never consciously notice: Our typography was not fully optimized to render properly.

The need of a custom Typeface

On smaller devices and lower resolution screens, our previous typeface—Proxima Nova—had some issues. This wasn't just a visual inconvenience; it was a fundamental barrier to continue to explore a system that could encompass desktop and mobile experiences..

Typography isn't just about aesthetics. It's the silent communicator of information, the invisible bridge between complex technology and human understanding.

Inspiration and Exploration

We didn't just want to replace the typeface. We wanted to create one that embodied Nutanix's design philosophy by retain our brand's playful, rounded personality and making sure that it render crystal-clear across all devices.

Legibility was an important goal in this exercise. It was also a good opportunity to address some rendering issues we faced in the past with our font rendering by properly aligning the glyphs to the baseline, we solved an issue that we had in our product for years and relied on a css hack.

Proxima Nova: Familiar and approachable
San Francisco: Modern and clean

The Meticulous Crafting Process

Crafting Nutanix Soft was a meticulous process. We embarked on an exhaustive analysis of over 12,000 character variations, refining letter shapes to achieve optimal readability. By addressing sub-pixel rendering issues on mobile screens and striking a balance between geometric precision and brand expressiveness, we created a rounded font that authentically embodies the Nutanix Visual style.

Go to playground ->

Technical Considerations

Nutanix Soft emerged as a rounded sans-serif typeface with:

5 distinct weights (thin to bold)
Optimized counter spaces for better low-density display legibility
Precise vertical alignment
A personality that speaks to our brand's innovative spirit

The Rollout

Once our typeface went through several iterations of changes and tweaks, we ended up with a one that suited our needs.

The challenge was to make sure that we have a process to rollout or typeface.

As the first part of the rollout we made the typeface available through github internally to engineering and as a folder for our designers to install it locally. In addition we temporarily created a repository to host the font for those teams that needed a quick css change.

In terms of product strategy we allowed gradual coexistence during migration, but anything new needed to be designed and implemented with the new fonts. A new consolidation project allowed us to piggyback on the effort to promote migration to those teams that didn't have cycles to make the proper changes.

Eventually we ended support for Proxima Nova soft and worked exclusively with Nutanix Soft.

Evolution of Nutanix Soft

Our future plans are ambitious:

Unify typography across product and marketing teams
Explore dynamic type concepts
Continue refining our visual language

Conclusion

The work with Nutanix Soft represents more than a typeface. It's a testament to our belief that great design is about solving invisible problems, creating experiences that feel effortless and intuitive.