A Quick Guide to Serif Fonts

Even if you are an experienced designer, it is not a bad time to refresh your memory a little with the style of serif typefaces, a few inspirations and a little history. Yes, there is history. It won't hurt, I promise.

                             

Humanist and Old Style

In the Middle Ages, almost all movable types, books and portable documents, were written in blackletter. Although there are modern types of blackletter that are stylish and widely used, ancient blackletter is almost unreadable to modern eyes.

 

The Humanist type, therefore, first appeared in the fifteenth century, moving in tandem with the development of literature and art, which explains why some websites call them 'venetian' typefaces.

 

Humanist sans serif fonts are the most faithful to calligraphic type, as their curves are uneven and shaky, and most of their letter carriers like 'o' and 'e' tend to curve to the left.

 

There is not much contrast between the strokes, and the characters are very thin in terms of their black color in relation to the pages at that time (try scrolling on your screen and you will see what I'm talking about). A quirk that I would say is a signature feature of humanist typefaces is the low 'e' with a horizontal slant.

 

Humanist and Old-Style fonts are often written in the same category, as Old-Style fonts appeared recently. The main difference you should be aware of is that Old Style typefaces are straight.

 

So letters like the lowercase 'o' are not slanted as much, and the lowercase 'e' has a normal, straight bar. Most of us tend to use both words interchangeably with many fonts, but we usually talk about Old Style type, not Humanist. Other tips:

 

Text/Exhibition – Calluna

Calluna, created by Jos Buivenga and released in 2009, is great. It looks sharp in small fonts test with different ascender and descender serifs, while other calligraphic elements come to life at larger sizes. I recommend it for visuals, as well as text, but I advise you to try and keep the size at least 14pts.

 

Transitional

As we move further up the time chain to Modern Serif, you will notice that we move further from the style of calligraphy. Change is the Georgias and Baskervilles, the Times New Novels for your PC.

 

They emerged during the Age of Enlightenment, a movement of intellectuals whose goal was to advance thought through the scientific method. Colors are straighter, curves are more consistent, and there is more contrast between thick and thin strokes. The angle letters (or difficult times) on letters with numbers such as eo, b, and e, now stand upright.

Text – Georgia

Georgia is old, but I feel it is known for its greatness. It feels very large compared to many changes on the same scale, and it has good readability in large fields. This probably explains its use in the New York Times and the Chronicle, where it explodes in the 15th.

 

Slab Serif

Until the 19th century, typography was mainly designed for large blocks of text in books and documents and the like, but the industrial revolution in it saw a huge increase in the advertising of many types.

 

And so came the slab serif, a typeface with a big, thick serif at the end of the stroke, to catch attention in all kinds of prints, signs, and posters in Great Britain. Napoleon returned from his trip from Egypt in 1809, amid the western world's increasing interest in Egypt, which may explain why "Egypt" appears as a name.

 

Among the first slab serif group is Clarendon, the first registered typeface published in 1842 by Robert Besley in London. Another important design is Fat Face, a typeface that took modern Serifs, stretched and expanded them until they looked, well, fat. Advertisements in the 19th Century show a combination of slab and face oil.

 

Show – Sanchez

Look, Sanchez is one of my favorite slab serifs. It's interesting. I used it in several prints I made. It is a good example of where the modern slab is these days: more beautiful and less to difference of the stroke; to be honest it is not necessary. Its serifs are creative, and there is an interesting shape to its curves.

 

It is one of the few types of colors where I can see the use for each of its weight: the light looks good on the small notes, while there is a controlled power to the semi-boldness that I enjoy. Sanchez is truly one of the best works of Latino type.

 

Text – Museo Slab

Considering the history of the slab, it should not be surprising that it is a little difficult to find slab serifs based on large paragraphs in small fonts. A good thing to do, or what I did, is to go to a site like myfonts.com, look at the section you want, and reduce the width to 12 points, and see which one reads. It's not perfect, as it doesn't read much under 14pts, but I recommend it for a unique-looking paragraph.

 

Modern Serif

We now come to modern serif. Stroke contrast has reached extremes, and serifs are much thinner and straighter. Holes, letter holes like 'e', ​​'n', or 'w,' are usually small, and have full stress.

 

So what is the point of all these parts?

I wrote a guide to serifs to try to make your life easier. Section leaders make things easier, but the bottom line is that this is just a model. Everything is an example. And the models are fragmented, and they always fail to cover the full skill spectrum.

 

I can only encourage you to approach this article, and articles like it, understanding that drowning in semantics and terminology will do nothing. Their purpose is to help you better understand how thoughts and feelings are communicated. Anything that doesn't is a waste of your time.