Operator Mono

Hoefler & Co. have a new, monospaced font with some unique characteristics. From the introductory post:

Like many screen fonts before it, Operator could pay extra attention to the brackets and braces and punctuation marks more critical in code than in text. But if Operator took the unusual step of looking not only to serifs and sans serifs, but to script typefaces for inspiration, it could do a lot more. It could render the easily-confused I, l, and 1 far less ambiguous. It could help “color” syntax in a way that transcends the actual use of color, ensuring that different parts of a program are easier to identify.

It’s interesting to note that at larger sizes, as shown below, Operator looks quite idiosyncratic and, frankly, not remarkably appealing.

Operator Mono

But in a developer’s environment, as shown below, the idiosyncrasies are neutralized the font begins to really sing. The distinction between the standard and script variants makes for outstanding code legibility.

Operator Mono in Use in a Text Editor

More at typography.com.

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