Grinding through sweat, dust, mud, snow and water while fighting fatigue due to physical exhaustion. This is reality for extreme adventurers during their demanding sporting activities. And how well they perform depends on quickly interpreting clearly displayed UI graphics to gain the best possible understanding of elapsed time, heart rate, oxygen level, etc.

These extreme conditions push the usability of digital sport tracking gear to the limits. When an adventurer is exhausted, the readability of the text in poor reading conditions is even more critical. Excellent readability enables better results for users which leads to more satisfied customers.

Typolar has helped to realise this equation for Suunto. We created a highly readable sanserif UI font with the in-house design team to match the needs of outdoor sports. This wasn’t a simple task. The demands of physical exercise in difficult environments, combined with battery life and screen quality requirements, presented unique challenges.

Preserving battery life (21 days on a single charge) sets hard limits for luminosity and colours. Even when the screen resolution is high, the clarity of the text rendering is critically important for readability on a small device. Our practically proportioned UI fonts give text excellent sharpness and balance, their sturdy forms compensate for limited brightness allowing for long battery life. Modern and appealing typography helps users to enjoy what they already love to do even more.

The Suunto UI Next multi-weight font family (variable font) allows the design team to adjust and fine tune texts for various screen types and sizes. Clever letter proportions fit nicely into pixel grids in multiple sizes. Latin, Greek and Cyrillic alphabets are included, as well as many display styles for numerals.

Typolar has been working with Suunto since 2013 when the first set of UI fonts were designed for older screens. This work set a baseline for the unique characteristics of the Suunto UI brand. The new UI fonts evolve that design language, without loosing the valuable heritage and the value promise it carries.