COVIDtests.gov uses a free font that was developed for every language
The U.S. government’s website to order free COVID-19 tests uses Noto Sans, an open-source typeface that was designed to be used in any language
The U.S. government’s website to order free COVID-19 tests soft-launched today, one day ahead of schedule, and the site’s design is simple, clear, and easy-to-use, with an open-source typeface that was designed to be used in any language.
The site uses Noto Sans, which is part of a free typeface family that was developed for Google to work in every language in the Unicode Consortium standard and to be easy to read on mobile devices. The typeface was named for “tofu,” the nickname for the square tofu-like glyphs like this □□□ that appear when a computer doesn’t have the proper characters to display text.
Noto = no tofu, because the typeface has every character for more than 800 languages and more than 100 writing systems, living and dead. Though COVIDtests.gov sticks to English and Spanish, it could theoretically be translated into Cuneiform and nothing would be lost. Google commissioned Monotype to design Noto, which was released in 2016 after five years of work, according to the type foundry.
COVIDtests.gov has big blue “Order Free At-Home Tests” buttons at the top and bottom of the page that take users to a USPS checkout page where you don’t have to enter your email address if you don’t want to and it costs $0.00 with $0.00 in shipping and handling to order.
The site also has links to information about health insurance companies paying for at-home tests and how to find your nearest free testing site. The bottom of the page includes information about what to do if you test positive or negative, plus public health recommendations to protect yourself and others from COVID.
We don’t get to decide when the pandemic is over, COVID does, and the site presents testing as just one step to protect yourself and others, along with vaccines, boosters, well-fitting masks when gathering indoors, and social distancing.
While trust in public institutions has been trending downwards in recent years, the site leans on the credentials of some of the most admired brands in the federal government. A banner at the top of the page notes the website and others that use .gov are official sites of the U.S. government, while logos for two of the most popular federal agencies are at the bottom: the Department of Health and Human Services, which runs the We Can Do This COVID-19 public education campaign, and the U.S. Postal Service, which will deliver the tests. An April 2020 Pew poll, just one month into the pandemic, found USPS and HHS had 91% and 73% approval ratings, respectively.
The federal government has been criticized for unclear public health recommendations throughout the pandemic, but COVIDtests.gov is direct and easy to understand. Should the site’s official launch and subsequent test deliveries go as planned, the site could be an example of how governments can rebuild trust and deliver for citizens with clean user interface and simple design.