Recognising typefaces: Renaissance serif, Didone, slab serif and grotesque

Typefaces are divided into groups according to how the letters are built: whether they have serifs, how great the contrast is between thick and thin strokes and which way the stress axis leans. The most common groups are blackletter styles, Renaissance serif, transitional serif, modern serif or Didone, slab serif with block serifs, grotesque and humanist sans serif. The groups broadly follow chronological order, so they also help to date a printed item.

Facts

Three things to look at

To place a typeface it is usually enough to look at the letters o, e and a and at a capital such as H. Do they have serifs, the small cross-strokes at the ends of the strokes? Is the difference great between the thick main strokes and the thin hairlines? And where are the thinnest parts of the o: slanted, as after a broad pen, or straight up and down?

The answers give the group. Moderate contrast and a slanted stress axis mean Renaissance serif, greater contrast and an almost vertical axis transitional serif, extreme contrast and a vertical axis modern serif. Heavy block serifs and little contrast mean slab serif, and no serifs at all mean sans serif. The diagram Parts of letters below shows the names of the parts and the difference between serif and grotesque.

Blackletter styles and Renaissance serif

The first printed types imitated handwriting. Gutenberg’s textura of around 1455 is dense and angular, with broken curves and many ligatures. The blackletter styles – textura, rotunda, schwabacher and fraktur – lived on in northern Europe for a long time, and in Sweden most books were printed in fraktur until the end of the 18th century.

In Italy the printers made roman types after the humanists’ round hand. Nicolas Jenson’s roman from Venice in 1470 and Garamond from Paris around 1540 have a slanted stress axis, moderate contrast and small, wedge-shaped serifs. An e with a slanted crossbar is a sign of the earliest roman types. The Renaissance serif is also called Garalde, after Garamond and Aldus Manutius.

Transitional and modern serif

In the 18th century the roman type became sharper. Baskerville of 1757 has greater contrast and an almost vertical axis, and it is called transitional because it stands between the old and the modern types. Many later interpretations of 18th-century English and French types also belong here.

Didot and Bodoni took contrast to its limit around 1800: vertical stress, hairline, straight serifs and heavy main strokes. The group is called modern serif or Didone, after Didot and Bodoni, and suited the clear forms of Neoclassicism. These typefaces demand good paper and fine printing, and later became the favourites of fashion magazines.

Slab serif and the types of advertising

The advertising of industrial society demanded letters that could be seen from a distance. First came fat faces, extremely heavy roman types from around 1810, and then slab serifs, or Egyptians, with strong, rectangular block serifs and little contrast. The name came from the period’s interest in Egypt, not from any Egyptian model. Clarendon of 1845 has block serifs that join the stems smoothly.

The slab serif lived on in typewriter faces and in much of the advertising and newspaper headlines of the 20th century. When you see a poster with many different heavy typefaces in different sizes, it is often 19th-century advertising, set in metal and wooden type.

Grotesque and humanist sans serif

The first printed typeface without serifs, Two Lines English Egyptian, was shown at Caslon’s foundry in London in 1816, in capitals only. In the 19th century such types became common in advertising and were called grotesque, perhaps because they looked so unusual. The grotesques have an almost even line thickness and closed forms, and Akzidenz-Grotesk of 1898 and Helvetica of 1957 belong here.

The humanist sans serif has the proportions of roman type and the movement of the pen, with more open forms and little contrast. Johnston for the London Underground in 1916 and Gill Sans of 1928 are the classic examples. The geometric sans serif, such as Futura of 1927, is built from the circle, the square and the triangle. The difference between the groups is explained further in the guide to serif and sans serif.

The system of classification

The classification that most people use goes back to the French typographer Maximilien Vox, who in 1954 divided typefaces into groups with names such as Humane, Garalde, Réale, Didone, Mécane and Linéale. The system was adopted by the international typographic association ATypI and has since been extended in national variants. The boundaries are not sharp, and many typefaces lie between two groups.

For anyone who needs to recognise a printed item, the main groups are enough. Add the screen typefaces, such as Verdana of 1996, designed for pixels with a large x-height and open forms. More typefaces, from Roman inscriptions to web fonts, can be found in the typography category, and the guide to Helvetica tells the story of the best-known grotesque.

How to recognise it

Exercise

A typeface has a vertical stress axis, very thin hairlines and straight, hairline serifs. Which group does it belong to?