Optician Sans – A free font based on historical eye charts and optotypes
60 comments
·July 30, 2025egypturnash
arcticfox
I think all the testimonials are fake, if this wasn't clear to everyone. I thought they might be real at first but none of them exist. I actually thought that was kind of shitty to do, since they use real companies and media outlets.
(I don't really follow fonts but I do know there is a subculture crazy about them, so I thought it could be theoretically possible that people would write reviews of them).
jrockway
I clicked the Fast Company one because the quote seemed most fake to me and it was a real article. I learned that the underlying problem here is that eye charts only have like 10 letters on them, and this font attempts to guess the rest so you have a full alphabet.
jaysonelliot
I work for Khoi. I should ask him if he really gave this quote.
tim--
From the designer's website (https://anti.as/optiker-k) it seems that this was commissioned by ANTI Hamar for the rebranding project for Optiker-K, a Norwegian optician and optometrists store.
This is fantastic! More custom fonts like this should be open sourced.
To me the font looks pretty legible. Worth noting that the font is from 2018, so it's not really a new font, but it is still one of my favorites.
lelandfe
A deeper dive from the agency: https://medium.com/anewtypeofinterference/completing-a-typef...
jiehong
This reminds me of the eye chart used in some countries, because it isn't based on reading letters, but on a direction.
For example [0], you should indicate the direction where the E points to.
[0]: https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/61MRfRwHwWL._SL1235_.jpg
msikora
This is for kids.
mongol
I remember this from when I was a child. Was maybe 4-5 and had not learned the letters yet. But I could turn my hand.
bobmcnamara
Too many Red Ramages driving submarines I suppose.
ourmandave
I didn't notice until my last visit but they also make eye charts for kids who don't know letters yet.
cbm-vic-20
That main image makes my astigmatic eyes very unhappy.
https://optician-sans.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/Comp-3....
abtinf
Why did they animate it to add a blur?
atonse
OMG I kept thinking my glasses (progressive lenses) were causing that. I didn't realize it was animating.
GuinansEyebrows
probably to evoke the feeling of undergoing an eye exam.
dylan604
I can hear the tech asking "number 1 or number 2"
darkwater
Can't you clearly see why?
pimlottc
That's horrible, the full page blur is less bad since it's so obvious. But man, you should never be intentionally gaslighting the user by making them second-guess their own vision.
Orygin
The full page blur is horrendous. Every navigation to the page triggers it, so if you click and link and hit back, here's a blurry page for 2s. It also nearly triggers headaches for me, so clearly the webdesigner should not be hired for anything serious...
gadders
Nice font. Could have done without the dude's tinder profile pic though.
dylan604
You know you swiped right.
I had the same odd sentiment about the use of the images as well. It does nothing for me about wanting to use the font.
gadders
:-) Not my target market, but I'd be interested to hear how it worked out for him.
edwinjm
That’s how Nordic people look like <grin>
dogmatism
Nah
Atkinson Hyperlegible from the Braille institute is the way if we're going for fonts from vision experts
tim--
There's a mono version of the font too! https://fonts.google.com/specimen/Atkinson+Hyperlegible+Mono
its-summertime
that C is annoyingly O-ish, and the blurring... feels almost like its made by an anti-optician
jamesdwilson
it was derived from eye charts that are explicitly designed to find defects in your eyes - it is not a coincidence the O and C look similar.
artemisart
Yes I don't understand how they can claim it's optimized for legibility when the base font does the inverse.
jantissler
And there are also alternative versions of many letters as shown further down on the page.
Telemakhos
There's an alternative, more squarish C; about half the letters have alternative glyphs. If you're using macOS Font Book, scroll down to the bottom of the repertoire to see the alt glyphs.
mellonaut
For those that now find themselves inspired to type the Snellen E, the internet provides an OFL typeface that scratches your itch here¹ (this unclearly licensed modification² even comes with some cute but barely readable lowercase versions of the letters)
1] https://radagast.ca/snellen/snellen.html 2] https://mk.bcgsc.ca/snellen-optotype-font/
graypegg
Huh, so I'm only just learning that the Snellen chart isn't the common one! I wouldn't have known the name of it, but if someone asked me to doodle an eye chart from memory, I would've drawn that blocky E with the serifs! I've most likely been tested with the sans-serif Sloan chart I assume, but the letter forms just aren't distinct enough to stick in my brain I guess. A bit of a shame this font doesn't have a "Optician Serif" variant to look like the Snellen letters.
sandbach
Always amusing to see spelling errors on painstakingly put together design websites. Unless NRK did indeed mean 'Let us all behave like opticians!'
Rendello
Previously seen on HN in 2018: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18665595
They made a Medium post as well: https://medium.com/anewtypeofinterference/completing-a-typef...
I like how one of the testimonials is someone at Adobe basically quoting the copy at the top of the page.
"OPTICIAN SANS: A free font based on the historical eye charts and optotypes used by opticians world wide." - top copy
“A free typeface based on opticians’ eye charts” -Khoi Vinh, Principal designer, Adobe