Sans-serif

Sans-serif type is younger than it looks. The first ones appeared in the early nineteenth century, were considered ugly enough to be called grotesques, and spent a hundred years as display faces for posters before anybody set a book in one. The twentieth century changed that completely: signage, screens and modernism between them made the sans the default voice of anything that wants to sound current.

The family splits three ways, and the split is worth knowing because it decides how a face feels. Grotesques (Helvetica, Archivo) are the nineteenth-century line — tight apertures, a slightly awkward g, a certain blankness. Geometric faces (Futura, Poppins) are built from circles and straight lines, which makes them feel designed rather than written. Humanist faces (Gill Sans, Source Sans) keep the proportions of a serif with the serifs removed, which is why they are the easiest to read in quantity.

On screens the sans won by default, because at small sizes and low resolutions serifs were the first thing to turn to mush. That argument is largely over — a modern display renders a serif perfectly well — but the habit remains, and interfaces are still overwhelmingly sans.