The development of photosetting and then digital reproduction caused a substantial reduction in the costs of manufacturing type, i.e. through the introduction of electronic typefaces. The considerably enlarged memory capacities today mean that a wide selection of alphabets can be stored on a typesetting machine and are immediately available for use. Inspired by these factors, over the last decade, a variety of new creations have been introduced so today’s selection of fonts also includes a number of new sans serif styles.
Different strokes
A few sans serif types deserve at least brief mention here (see Fig. 29). In order to lighten up the sternness of the arrow straight lines, slightly bowed downstrokes were introduced.
Morris Fuller Benton had already worked on this concept in his
Clearface typeface family (1906). Recommendable modern versions include
Mixage™ by
Aldo Novarese and Bluejack by Phil Martin (
Optima™, Pascal etc. are often wrongfully classified in this group as they are clearly simply roman types without serifs).
Linear typefaces may also be lightened up with the addition of small serifs as, for instance, in
Quorum™,
Serif Gothic™ and
Newtext™.
In recent years, so-called rounded fonts have been created which feature characters with rounded off stroke ends, a somewhat purist approach to the abstraction of a line.
Digital displays with their typical 7-segment characters inspired the use of diagonal stroke endings as can be seen in
Quartz and
Russel Square™, for instance.
