While four categories are clearly inadequate for design professionals, dozens become self-defeating. We have put together a somewhat hybrid system of 15 styles, based on the historical and descriptive nomenclature first published in 1954 as the Vox system – and still widely accepted as a standard today. As discussed above, Humanist serif typefaces are strongly influenced by broad nib calligraphy, and Humanist sans is similar in many ways.

Times New Roman has undergone several updates and revisions over the years and is a staple of the printing and publishing industry. However, it has a stuffy old appearance and is best suited for the purpose it was initially designed for—condensed columns of type in newspapers. The new typeface was designed to be more legible and easier to read than its predecessor, and it quickly became popular with newspapers and publishers worldwide. Times New Roman is a serif typeface designed by Stanley Morison and Victor Lardent in 1931. It was commissioned by the British newspaper The Times, which wanted a new typeface to replace its existing font, Times Old Roman. Any two lines of text with the same number of characters in each line in a monospaced typeface should display as equal in width, while the same two lines in a proportional typeface may have radically different widths.

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Many technical improvements in printing and punchcutting during that period gave opportunities for refinement and production of many typefaces, revivals of which are still widely used for setting books or long texts. Also known as Aldine after Aldus Manutius; and sometimes Old-style, but this term is occasionally used for all Humanist, Garalde and Transitional typefaces. Rockwell font appeared with Monotype Design Studio in 1934, a time which saw the return to popularity of slab serif fonts.

It is known for its clean, modern, and geometric design and has become one of the world’s most popular and widely used typefaces. Common font formats include TrueType, OpenType and PostScript Type 1, while Metafont is still used by TeX and its variants. Applications using these font formats, including the rasterizers, appear in Microsoft and Apple Computer operating systems, Adobe Systems products and those of several other companies.

Script typefaces

Another name for Transitional is “realist”, which comes from the Spanish term for “royal” (it has nothing to do with realism), thanks to the typeface made for the Spanish King Phillip II by Plantin. Named after the two most notable type designers of the period between the late 1400s until the 1700s, French punchcutter Claude Garamond and Venetian printer Aldus Manutius. Garaldes are a step forward from Humanist, and are still influenced by formal calligraphy.

Grotesque Sans Serif
These are the first commercially popular sans serif typefaces. Contrast in stroke weight is most apparent in these styles, there is a slight “squared” quality to many of the curves, and several designs have choosing fonts for website the “bowl and loop” lowercase g common to Roman types. In some cases the R has a curled leg, and the G usually has a spur. This category also includes more modern, sans serif designs patterned after the first grotesques.

Further reading

Rounding out the sans serif typefaces are the Geometric and Humanistic styles. Geometric sans serifs, like the Modern serifs, took the style to the edge. They have letterforms based on simple geometric shapes — most notably the circular ‘O’ shapes — and are very modern. Their ultra-modern shapes do sacrifice legibility at smaller sizes, however. While serifs were the first typefaces to evolve after the original blackletters, sans serif typefaces largely came on to the design scene in the early 20th century. These early sans serif typefaces were called grotesque or gothic fonts and included typefaces like Franklin Gothic.

• They use it to avoid monotony, with long ascenders and descenders contrasting with short x-height letters.
• Today, some of the most used slab serifs include Archer from H&FJ and Officina Serif by Erik Spiekermann.
• Humanistic type styles attempt to improve the readability of sans serif typeface designs.
• As such, the topic of typefaces is both vast and highly technical.
• One of the most classic examples of a serif font style is Times New Roman, although there are now many more options to choose from when creating professional, well-designed visual content.

When it comes to commonly known type categories, you might be able to think of sans, serif, script and maybe slab. Four categories would be simple and easy, but it would also make design boring. Thankfully there are many more categories and subcategories to explore.

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The ratio between the x-height and the ascent or cap height often serves to characterize typefaces. Sans serif fonts are more modern and universal, giving you the opportunity to use them in a variety of different ways. From social media graphics to infographics and more, let’s explore a few ways that sans serif fonts can be used. You can also pair serif fonts with many other types of fonts, including sans serif and script fonts that we’ll cover shortly. Decorative Styles
This is the largest category and also the most diverse. Rarely used for lengthy blocks of text, decorative typefaces are popular for signage, headlines and similar situations were a strong typographic statement is desired.

Take a look at this animated graphic designed to be shared on social media. It uses different weights of the sans serif font Fira Sans, creating a beautifully modern design. Square Sans Serif
These designs are generally based on grotesque character traits and proportions, but have a definite and, in some instances, dramatic squaring of normally curved strokes. They usually have more latitude in character spacing than their sans serif cousins, and tend to be limited to display designs. This style originated with 15th century German printer Johannes Gutenberg, and the first Blackletter type styles are directly based on these manuscript forms.

The letters have wedged edges, diagonal stresses, bracketed, and light contrast in their font design. You can use serifs when printing out business cards, letterheads, etc., since they are legible even in small formats. This typeface style is designed to look informal, as if it were written in haste. This family includes Brush Script, Mistral, Kaufmann, Limehouse Script, Nadianne and Freestyle Script. These typefaces are most commonly used today in high-end fashion magazines because they are elegant, unhurried, calm and controlled. Today, modern serifs include but are not limited to ITC Bodoni, ITC Fenice, Adobe New Caledonia and Berthold Walbaum.

Modern serifs, Slab serifs, and Sans serifs come into the picture to combine readability and uniqueness. But for better readability, by 1710, William Caslon created Old Style with a touch of the medieval era. It’s the typical font we see when creators reference the olden times, hence the name. Are you ready to start creating stunning designs while putting the best fonts forward?

Original Garamond

They are characterized by a vertical axis, limited variation of stroke width and horizontally accented curves. These typefaces are popular because they are simple and practical. As the name implies, these typefaces broke the mold in their failure to maintain the historic elegance of serif style fonts. Grotesque fonts were greatly influenced by Modern (Didone) serif.