Sans Serif fonts are the most commonly used fonts on web pages and other browsers. It is a simple and subtle font and is hence used in most of the designs and pages to ensure good readability for the user. In this article, we will learn about Sans-Serif Fonts, their types, and their benefits.
Sans Serif Fonts
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Sans Serif Fonts in design
Sans Serif fonts are widely used in terms of design, such as in websites, like those of marketing, business, financial, website blogs, technical platforms, individual projects, etc. The range of sans serif fonts is so wide that it allows the user to choose the wishful font according to the needs of the website. For eg. In many posters, and those containing art & text of graphic designing, minimal typography is needed to enhance the core theme of the poster. In those cases, sans serif fonts are used to ensure good readability and provide a better experience to the user. Serifs are added ahead of sans which makes it more sophisticated and easy to use in typography.
Types of Sans Serif Fonts
There are mainly three types of Sans Serif Fonts and their details are mentioned as follows:
1. Grotesque Sans Serif Font:
- Grotesque was the earliest type of sans-serif font.
- They are considered to be solid and bold and have a good emphasis texture with enhanced readability.
- It mostly did not consist of lowercase italic typography and was a kind of comical font.
- Since it was the first type of Sans Serif Font, it was a little strange and awkward, and hence, the name was kept as Sans Serif Font, as Grotesque literally means something that is strange or comical, which is not natural.
- It has a geometric appearance.
- It was the first invention of the sans serif font; hence, updates and major improvements were made in order to enhance the font, which was shown in Neo-Grotesque Font.
- Examples of Grotesque fonts are: Nanum Gothic, News Gothic, etc.
2. Neo-grotesque Sans Serif Font:
- The Neo-groteque font was introduced in the mid tweenties, in order to enhance the existing grotesque fonts and hence, this font consisted of improvements and betterments that resulted from the previous fonts.
- Neo-grotesque fonts have limited stroke lines and are more curvy.
- They are bold and solid and better in terms of typography.
- They are more organized in size and better in shape than the original grotesque fonts.
- Egs of Neo-grotesque Fonts are: Helvetica, Work Sans etc.
3. Geometric Sans Serif Fonts:
- In today’s world, Geometric Sans Serif fonts are the most commonly used and modern type of font.
- They shape text like near perfect circles, squares and create perfectly straight lines and geometric shapes.
- They generally have a very clean and modern typography.
- The fonts are straight, simple and easy to understand and readable.
- They also provide a better emphasis and increase the readability & enhance the emphasis.
- Egs of Neo-grotesque Fonts are: Poppins, DM Sans, Raleway etc.
Sans Serif Font for Your Brand
While creating brands, or logos, one must choose Sans serif fonts as they augur well with the basic designs & their aspects. For a brand, one can choose short terms or phrases that help to improvise the design, alongwith it’s effects & text. The text must be represented in a minimal manner, & a subtle representation of font is what constitutes a good brand, or a good logo. And sans serif fonts are capable of helping achieve that. Thus, a good sans serif font, such as Helvetica must be chosen while designing a brand, or a logo. Sans serif fonts help in establishing a good trust over the brand as it helps in providing a classy & elegant experience to the customer.
The evolution of Sans Serif fonts
- The Sans Serif Fonts literally means, sans without serifs. The first ever font that was ever invented was the grotesque font, which was a kind of comical font, as the name suggests. It did not have a very captivating font, and also was a slight geometrical, reducing the readability, further changes were thus made to the existing grotesque font.
- While the sans serif fonts had begun to originate in the early eighteenth century, the true recognition of the fonts came into effect after William Caslon IV introduced it in the nineteenth century.
- Finally, a clean & modern typography was adopted & geometric sans serif fonts were put into effect, which created complete set of circles & other shapes, that helped improvise the font styles. This was done in the early twentieth century, thus evolving the sans serif fonts with geometric shapes & styles.
- In today’s times, fonts like Helvetica, Arial, etc have become popular. All such types of fonts of types of sans serif are used for web designing, graphic designing etc.
When to Use Sans Serif Fonts?
Sans serif fonts can be used at any place. There is no hard & fast rule, as in where to particularly apply the sans serif fonts. In most cases it depends on the needs of the consumer, as to what exactly it is expecting. Sans serif fonts are generally preferred over fancier fonts, as simpler fonts provide a good experience to the user. It helps improvise the design features & improve the typographic conventions & textures. They can be used at the following places:
- Printing arena: As in smaller sized fonts, sans serif are better in terms of readability & can be understood well by the reader. Thus, newspapers & other printing materials use these fonts.
- Web Designing: For web & graphic designing, fonts are kept minimal & subtle. For eg. We can use Roboto, or Helvetica for web designing, as they make it look simple & beautiful.
- Business & Formal Designs: In business & formal designs, one requires a simple design. We require professional and advanced typography & sans serif suits the best for it.
List of Sans Serif Fonts
There are several types of sans-serif fonts, but the main ones are listed below:
- Grotesque: First type of sans serif font, with a bold and comical typography.
- Helvetica: Best & most popular sans serif font, due to it’s simplicity & easier readability.
- Greycliff: Fonts for business & marketing, considered to be the most minimalistic & good looking font.
- Bergen Sans: A geometric font, with bold & curved attributes of fonts.
- Serif fonts: Fashionable & stylish fonts, such as Times New Roman, pre installed on computers.
- Open Sans: A very versatile font, as it is simple, professional, clean & minimal, yet beautiful.
- Droid Sans: Used for smaller size screens, with a good readability.
- Raleway: Great font, inspired by the neo-grotesque font family, it has several types in terms of font weight.
- PT Sans: Has different twists & turns for the font, with bold, italics & other font weights.
- Roboto: Better in terms of readability, comes in different sub categories & used for website making.
Conclusion
Sans Serif Fonts are optimal fonts that can be used to write texts, paragraphs, headings or add styled text during animations or effects. They can be used in several professional, and non-professional places and play a major role in creating projects. Keeping in mind it’s pros and cons, Sans Serif Fonts have a great typography and ensure amazing UI/UX designs.