V for Wiki is a beautiful app for browsing and reading Wikipedia on iPhone, iPad, and Apple Watch. It has a great interface and smart layout for articles so that the images and content are optimized for the best experience.

Especially interesting is the Nearby feature, which lets you learn about interesting points around you. It turns the app in an interactive travel guide.

“Best typography on the small screen yet.” — Erik Spiekermann, typographer

Asphalt is one of the headline typefaces used for the Memories feature in Apple iOS10.

The built-in apps in Apple’s newly announced iOS 7 use Neue Helvetica almost entirely. This is not a change from previous versions of the OS (other than a system-wide switch to lighter weights), but the typeface is all the more front-and-center in iOS 7 now that the depth, chrome, and button outlines have faded away.

There are a couple of exceptions from this Helvetication, however. One is the Newsstand app icon, and another is in the UI for the new Camera app. While the rest of the system uses Helvetica for buttons and navigation, settings in the Camera app are conspicuously exempt from the overarching style. At the moment, the type appears to be a slightly modified DIN 1451 Mittelschrift, the mechanical typeface created as a standard for German signage and industry — though they may have based the controls on one of the other (more typographically optimized) variants of DIN.

I assume the goal here was to simulate the typical routed lettering on a classic metal-bodied camera, such as a Leica. The allusion is subtle and effective, but this is a curious departure from Apple’s new stand against skeuomorphism. Perhaps there are certain brands (like Braun and Leica) that are simply too loved by Ive and company not to be emulated.

Apple’s newly announced iOS 7 brings a long-rumored “flatness” to the homescreen. The most visible typographic change is a lighter and more tightly spaced Neue Helvetica, a move that I’ll cover in more detail later. But first, a couple bits that noticeably depart from Helvetication: the Camera app and the Newsstand icon. The new look for Apple’s magazine and newspaper app emulates a group of publications, each with nameplates, making this icon stand out from the simple pictograms of the other system apps.

I cannot positively identify the “News” type, but it appears to be based on Friedrich Bauer’s 19th-century Gotisch. The Apple designers didn’t seem to be happy with the unfamiliar Fraktur ‘w’: they replaced it with a rotated ‘m’ — a thing they are known to do.

Other than the Calendar, Clock, and Maps apps, Newsstand is the only icon with type and a consipucuous showcase of multiple typefaces.

The icon as shown in the iOS 7 intro video, along with the underlying design grid for all the app icons.