Sans serif Facts for Kids

	Sans-serif font
	Serif font
	Serif font (serifs in red)

The Gill sans typeface by Eric Gill is used throughout the London Underground system

Simple sans-serif capitals on a late nineteenth-century memorial, London

In typography, a sans serif typeface is one that does not have the tiny feet called "serifs" at the end of strokes. The term comes from the French word sans, meaning "without" and "serif" from the Dutch word schreef meaning "line".

Sans serif typefaces have been used since the 18th century, but became most used in the twentieth century as the modern art movement developed. Most designers of typefaces were artists. Some were outstanding in other artistic fields, and were part of the wider artistic culture of their times.

The apostle of sans serif was Jan Tschichold (2 April 1902 Leipzig, Germany – 11 August 1974 Locarno, Switzerland), a German-Swiss graphic designer. Tschichold not only designed typefaces, he showed how they could be used in the design of book printing. He was a chief designer for Penguin Books after the Second World War.

Sans serif faces are most used for display signs, advertising and for headings in books. Although they seem to work well for the text in books, they are much less used for that purpose.

Other names for sans serif

Egyptian
Antique
Grotesque
Doric
Gothic (not to be confused with blackletter)
Lineale, or linear
Simplices
Swiss

Images for kids

Syntax, originally released by D. Stempel AG in 1969. A humanist sans-serif.
Rothbury, an early modulated sans-serif typeface from 1915. The strokes vary in width considerably.
An inscription at the neoclassical grotto at Stourhead in the west of England dated to around 1748 (replica shown), one of the first to use sans-serif letterforms since the classical period
An early 1810 "neoclassical" use of sans-serif capitals to represent antiquity, by William Gell
Gill Sans on the nameplate of a 4468 Mallard locomotive (built in 1938). It was marketed as a sophisticated refinement of earlier sans-serifs, taking inspiration from Roman capitals and designer Eric Gill's experience carving monuments and memorials.
A 1969 poster exemplifying the trend of the 1950s and 1960s: solid red colour, simplified images and the use of a grotesque face. This design, by Robert Geisser, appears to use Helvetica.
Three sans-serif "italics". News Gothic has an oblique. Gothic Italic no. 124, an 1890s grotesque, has a true italic resembling Didone serifs of the period. Seravek, a modern humanist typeface, has a more organic italic which is less folded-up.
Dublin 1848, caps-only heading with crossed V-form 'W'
Corset advertisement using multiple grotesque typefaces, United States, 1886
Light sans-serif being used for text, Germany, 1914
German propaganda poster, 1914
Small art-nouveau flourishes on 'v' and 'e'. Ljubljana, 1916.
Italic, Dublin, 1916
Nearly monoline and stroke-modulated sans; Austrian war bond poster, 1916
Broad block capitals. Hungarian film poster, 1918.
Monoline sans-serif with art-nouveau influenced tilted 'e' and 'a'. Embedded umlaut at top left for tighter linespacing.
Art Deco thick block inline sans-serif capitals, inner details kept very thin. France, 1920s.
Berthold Block, a thick German sans-serif with shortened descenders, allowing tight linespacing. Switzerland, 1928.
Artistic sans-serif keeping curves to a minimum (the line 'O Governo do Estado'), Brazil, 1930
Lightly modulated sans-serif lettering on a 1930s poster, pointed stroke endings suggesting a brush
Geometric sans-serif capitals, with sharp points on 'A' and 'N'. Australia, 1934.
Dwiggins' Metrolite and Metroblack typefaces, geometric types of the style popular in the 1930s
Stencilled lettering apparently based on Futura Black, 1937
A 1940s American poster. The curve of the 'r' is a common feature in grotesque typefaces, but the 'single-storey' 'a' is a classic feature of geometric typefaces from the 1920s onwards.
1952 Jersey holiday events brochure, using the popular Gill Sans-led British style of the period
Swiss-style poster using Helvetica, 1964. Tight spacing characteristic of the period.
Ultra-condensed industrial sans-serif in the style of the 1960s; Berlin, 1966
Neo-grotesque type, Switzerland, 1972: Helvetica or a close copy. Irregular baseline may be due to using transfers.
Tightly-spaced ITC Avant Garde; 1976
Governmental poster using Univers, 1980
Anti-nuclear poster, 1982
1997 film festival poster, Ankara
Distorted sans-serif in the "grunge typography" style, Ankara, 2002
Letterpress poster by Alan Kitching, 2015
Blackletter calligraphy in a fifteenth-century bible
Sample image of condensed sans-serifs from the Figgins foundry of London in an 1845 specimen-book. Much less influenced by classical models than the earliest sans-serif lettering, these faces became extremely popular for commercial use.
Sans-serif type in both upper- and lower-case on a 1914 poster

Sans serif facts for kids

Other names for sans serif

Images for kids

See also