Kurt R.A. Giambastiani

The 2000-oughts and -teens have been a Spartan period, where society repeatedly pared and trimmed and shaved away at norms, ushering out elements deemed unnecessary in favor of brutal efficiencies and ever-more-draconian austerity plans.

I am, of course, speaking of typography.

Sans-serif fonts (those without the little feet and tails, i.e., serifs, as part of their design) have been around for a long time, but with the rise of PCs in the 1990s, they became ubiquitous. We’ve had Helvetica since the ’50s (or earlier, depending on your source), but it was Arial (the royalty-free version of Helvetica) that pushed sans-serif fonts into every household, numbing minds around the globe.

Stripped of their helpful appurtenances and with their Didone-esque combinations of heavy and light strokes replaced by uniform widths, these “sans” fonts were welcomed by the Information Age as a way to “clean up” text and present it on computer screens (especially low-rez monitors) in a hyper-efficient, minimalist (and some would say “soulless”) format. These bare-bones fonts are easier to render, requiring less computing power to display, and the world at large became enamored of them. Logos began to shed serifs like a Labrador’s fur in springtime, with companies as diverse as Canon, HSBC, The Gap, Google, and Burberry (really? Burberry?) all ditching their long-time serif fonts for leaner, meaner, more streamlined versions.

In my opinion (as you’ve probably surmised), serif fonts are the gold standard. They are the Oxford commas of the typographical world. Hear me out on this.

Those who eschew the Oxford comma (i.e., the comma placed before the last item in a list, as in “red, white, and blue”) always have to rely on a caveat. “The final comma is totally unnecessary,” they say, “unless it’s required for clarity.” This is, therefore, a rule predicated on a non-qualitative variable—clarity—thus making it too fungible to be of any universal use. I mean, a sentence that is perfectly clear to me without the final serial comma might be totally misinterpreted by you. Clarity is not a solid enough foundation for a rule like this, as it’s completely subjective.

Likewise, the sans-serif fonts strip away all of the little tails, feet, and ears from serif lettering, deeming them totally unnecessary.

Unnecessary except, of course, unless required for clarity. Like the one they leave in.

Consider the capital ‘i’ and the lowercase ‘L’. Typed together in this font (most likely shown as a sans font on your monitor) you’d have a hard time differentiating between them. Test yourself here:

I l I l I l I l

How’d you do? Which ones were an uppercase ‘i’ and which a lowercase ‘L’?

Luckily, we can usually figure them out from context, as in “I’ll be going to Ionia, Illinois, before I become ill.”

But look back a bit in this post, back to where I mentioned the decade where the PCs began to flourish. See that “1990s” up there? What’s that little flag on the top of the number one? It’s a SERIF!

Yep. For clarity’s sake, sans-serif fonts almost always have a serif on the numeral “1”, because without it, you’d never be able to tell a capital ‘i’ from a lowercase “L” from a “1” especially if they were all mixed together.

So, serifs have a specific purpose. They help us distinctly identify otherwise similar typography. They are also proven to be easier to read, especially in longer works (like books). Sans-serif fonts are just a way to save ink or computing power; they are not a reader’s friend.

Thankfully, the sans-serif tide has begun to turn.

Yes, outside the bastion of the printed book where they still reign supreme, serif fonts are making a comeback. Logos are popping up with lovely serifs and interesting contrast in stroke-weight. There aren’t many, and none of the recently “gone sans” crowd has switched back, but new companies are coming into being, fully formed with serif fonts. Look around. You’ll see them, now that I’ve pointed it out.

Hopefully the pendulum won’t swing so far as to bring back the ludicrous serif-overuse of the ’70s, but even that would be better than another decade spent staring at the typographical nothing-sandwich of Helvetica, Arial, and Calibri.

k