From the course: Design a Condensed Sans Serif Typeface
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Origin of sans serifs - Glyphs App Tutorial
From the course: Design a Condensed Sans Serif Typeface
Origin of sans serifs
- [Instructor] Sans serif letterforms are ancient, dating back to the Phoenicians, the Greeks, and the Etruscans. It's a very natural form for inscriptions and marks in clay and wax. Sans serif types first appear in very limited scope and use in the early 19th century, but by the middle of the century, they had firmly taken hold in posters and advertisements. Originally, sans fonts were called Egyptian, as a reference to their ancient origins and foreign appearance. Later, they became referred to as gothics and grotesques. Gothic is a fairly easy label to understand. We think of it today as relating to black letter or gothic architecture, and it's true. There is a strong relationship between the proportions of black letter fonts and 19th century sans serifs. But gothic, in the 17th and 18th century, had more broad meaning of 'not classical', and the new sans serif style was certainly a break from classical proportions and form. The term, grotesque, is a little more complex. It still…
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