When did the "Serif vs. Sans" derby started?
scannerlicker
Posts: 18
Comments
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Back when screens were much lower resolution, and LCD-specific strategies didn't exist yet (because they were dependent on LCDs which were not yet predominant), this idea was pretty obviously true. Screen fonts were specific pixel-based things and very different from print fonts. There just weren't enough pixels (and available sub-pixels) to do serif faces properly.
Early screen-font legibility research easily confirmed this.
Resolutions have improved immensely, and so have font rendering techniques. So the idea that sans serif is better for screen, while clearly true 30 years ago, began to change. Unfortunately, the current truth is not nearly as well known as the former truth. Nowadays I doubt anyone seriously familiar with the topic would make any blanket statement of sans serif superiority for screen use. But memes are hard to kill.7 -
Thanks, Thomas!
Well, this sounds obvious enough, my suspicion was also this. But you mention research about this topic; is it something I can still find?
And what was the inaugural moment for screen serifs? Georgia? I mean, it was almost 30 years ago (1993), so is there probably some earlier successful attempts?
Cheers!0 -
In 1991 Microsoft added TrueType to Windows 3.1 and Apple added it to System 7. Both included nice TrueType versions of Times. But IMHO the real breakthrough for serifs on screen happened in the early 2000s when LCDs replaced CRTs and users moved to operating systems that used subpixel text rendering as the default. Georgia was a very functional typeface, as were earlier customized serifs like Courier and Times. But there’s a big difference between fonts needing to be painstakingly crafted for legibility on a screen and a font just displaying well with basic, or even no, hinting.scannerlicker said:And what was the inaugural moment for screen serifs? Georgia? I mean, it was almost 30 years ago (1993), so is there probably some earlier successful attempts?5 -
Thanks, James!
But technical challenges aside, did these early legibility/readability tests were done with high performing serifs? The degree of complexity of a, say, more calligraphic serif compared to a geometric sans is clear, as well as it's difficulty to rasterize; though (and presuming that it could be both done skillfully), how much would a serif underperform? If it would at all, I mean.
But back on topic: I'm not advocating for one over another; I'm just curious on when and how this idea became popular.
Great insight, James!0 -
The idea became popular prior to the digital era, in the 1930s Miles Tinker's readability testing published in his book "Readability of Print." He concluded that serif type was best for continuous reading. This battle continued for decades with other conclusions like "We read best what we read most". Screen resolution had a different set of operating factors than print, as Thomas points out. My guess would be that the push back will continue between various forces with each side having a voice.1
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Certainly, fonts do have rendering problems at low resolution, but how much distortion is acceptable is open to debate. Microsoft and Apple took different approaches, crisp vs. fuzzy. In as much as Microsoft foregrounded its sub-pixel-implementing fonts (including serifed) in readability theory, e.g. “Now Read This”, it did play to and reinforce the idea that there is something demonstrable about readability, and that sharpness is desirable; however, I concur with Thomas that it was just very very obvious that serifed type didn’t work as well as sans on pre-Retina screens.
Times was actually not too bad, and with its finely tapered serifs has some finesse when scaled up in size.
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The original Mac system included a serifed font, New York. It was the default in many of the included apps, such as Note Pad, MacWrite, even the Calculator. It was kind of a low-res bitmapped interpretation of ITC Garamond, Apple's corporate typeface at the time.
The default was changed to Geneva (a sans serif) in one of the early system updates. I don't know what the reason for the change was, but I don't think anyone complained.
I remember thinking it was kind of cool and didn't find it hard to read.
All of this was before the use of outline fonts on-screen.
It might be interesting to note that the default font in web browsers was (maybe still is) Times. The early web was Times all the time.1 -
Chuck Bigelow did quite a bit of research of that subject in early and mid-1980s. Some of his findings and hypotheses were published in The Seybold Report, Scientific American, TUGboat, the RIDT conference proceedings, etc. See, for example:
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Well, it might continue. Although, personally, I believe that it's a somewhat stupid question, since there are many factors that makes a design well-performing, as well as ignoring the conditions for which a particular design was trying to respond.Chris Lozos said:The idea became popular prior to the digital era, in the 1930s Miles Tinker's readability testing published in his book "Readability of Print." He concluded that serif type was best for continuous reading. This battle continued for decades with other conclusions like "We read best what we read most". Screen resolution had a different set of operating factors than print, as Thomas points out. My guess would be that the push back will continue between various forces with each side having a voice.
And "sans vs serif" is just a very superficial question. Which makes it charming.
Thanks for your input!1 -
Nick Shinn said:Certainly, fonts do have rendering problems at low resolution, but how much distortion is acceptable is open to debate. Microsoft and Apple took different approaches, crisp vs. fuzzy. In as much as Microsoft foregrounded its sub-pixel-implementing fonts (including serifed) in readability theory, e.g. “Now Read This”, it did play to and reinforce the idea that there is something demonstrable about readability, and that sharpness is desirable; however, I concur with Thomas that it was just very very obvious that serifed type didn’t work as well as sans on pre-Retina screens.
Times was actually not too bad, and with its finely tapered serifs has some finesse when scaled up in size.
Nick, I think that Mark summed it up well: although, yes, when within a tiny pixel grid, a sans (due to its simplicity) is easier to produce satisfactory results, there were still examples of good serif typefaces, even in the era of bitmap fonts.Mark Simonson said:The original Mac system included a serifed font, New York. It was the default in many of the included apps, such as Note Pad, MacWrite, even the Calculator. It was kind of a low-res bitmapped interpretation of ITC Garamond, Apple's corporate typeface at the time.
The default was changed to Geneva (a sans serif) in one of the early system updates. I don't know what the reason for the change was, but I don't think anyone complained.
I remember thinking it was kind of cool and didn't find it hard to read.
All of this was before the use of outline fonts on-screen.
It might be interesting to note that the default font in web browsers was (maybe still is) Times. The early web was Times all the time.
For example, Carter's Georgia is another example of a typeface that ruled the web and low-resolution screens for decades. Still, when you mentioned "sharpness" as something "desirable", I read it as "clear identification of form", so we're on the same page, here.
Thank you both for your input! Always good to learn from you guys!0 -
This is gold, thank you Maxim!Maxim Zhukov said:Chuck Bigelow did quite a bit of research of that subject in early and mid-1980s. Some of his findings and hypotheses were published in The Seybold Report, Scientific American, TUGboat, the RIDT conference proceedings, etc. See, for example:0 -
Hi. I never noticed there was a derbyscannerlicker said:Hello, everyone!
While I was writing some stuff, I began wondering when and how this idea that sans-serif type is more legible on screen started.
Do any of you have an idea about it? Cheers!
I have been working with screens and typefaces since beginning of 80s in professional typesetting equpments and later on for the web. As a graphic designer I tried to use the most suitable fonts for the quest. In the beginning of web was only "Times" but when neaded sans-serif I did a graphic pic for that.
There are sans-serifs that works bad on the screen and there are serifs that works perfect, and viceversa... And have always been. Seen and heard people mentioned this subject, but I really don't understand.
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Some interesting notes on TNR being the web default... http://www.typophile.com/node/63435
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In the early days of computing monospaced bitmap fonts were mostly sans (with the exception of cap I, lc i and j) because it was hard to cram serifs into an 8 x 8 pixel grid. I also think sans became the most popular style when we moved to proportional fonts as they could be a little narrower - getting a little more text in a dialog.
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Mark Simonson wrote:The original Mac system included a serifed font, New York. It was the default in many of the included apps, such as Note Pad, MacWrite, even the Calculator.Actually, Apple never seemed to make up their mind on this front. They switched back and forth between New York and Geneva several times.
André1 -
Hmm. Not sure about that. I bought my first Mac a month after they were launched in 1984, so I've used every version of MacOS. I could be wrong, but my recollection was that the switch only happened once, from New York to Geneva, as part of one of the early system updates, maybe 2.0.1
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0.97 Used New York
1.1 Used Geneva
2.0 Was back to New York
André2 -
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One aspect of this discussion, especially in digital screen context, that I find interesting and largely unexplored is the notion that stylistic aspects of the sans are of importance in its supposed better legibility, or at very least in its perceived dominance in this domain. When compared to serifs typefaces, sans can be ascribed a more utilitarian, clear and rational tone (in most types, anyway; certainly grotesques, most geometrics, and surely a good amount of humanists as well).
It could be argued that computers, and screens as their typographic user interfaces, needed to have a typographic voice that echoes the functional approach of the machine itself, and how we humans expect it to look like. Or to put it a tad poignantly, a device that can in a split second make more calculations than a human in a lifetime simply has no room for the grace and refinement of an antiqua.1 -
Working as an art director in the early 1990s, I would try out different typefaces for new projects, and was struck by how old-fashioned serifed styles made things look—and retro was not in fashion except for scripts.
This was particularly notable for body text, where the mantra had always been that serifs were de rigueur for legibility. So that idea was abandoned (or mothballed, at least).
There were exceptions, Scala, for instance.
And slightly earlier, before digital really took over the media, Licko’s Matrix was ubiquitous.
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Based on my own findings when making pixel typefaces in the 1990s I found that serifs require a certain fidelity from the medium in which they are rendered in order to improve readability. On a grid of anything between 9 and approx. 20 ppem serifs are usually just heavy slabs that clutter shapes, and make good spacing more difficult. In these environments a pixel more or less can make a huge difference.
My experience can be seen and read on www.type-invaders.com/outbox/serifs.html, a design investigation from 1999 where I tried to design a pixel typeface for e-mail. Here is a small excerpt:
I was curious if the addition of serifs would enhance the legibility of my typeface. In traditional type design the role of serifs is to emphasize the horizontals and to optically ‘glue’ letters together within a word. I was looking for ways to achieve this effect in my design but discovered that the addition of horizontal serifs was not the solution. Some letters started to physically touch each other (like the rm combination for instance). The spacing between the letters altered dramatically as well. In my opinion it became too tight.
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beautiful experiments. bitmap fonts ROCK
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Since Mark Simonson seemed interested in the early Macintosh fonts, I thought I'd post a sample of the *original* Macintosh bitmap fonts -- i.e. the ones used on the prototype systems before Susan Kare had finalized the “city” fonts which shipped with the first macs in 1984. These are from mid to late 1983. (note that apple “restarted” its system version numbers for the final release, going from 7.x to 0.85).
André5 -
Interesting.
After getting my first Mac in 1984, I signed up for the Apple developer program in order to get the "Font Editor" program that was part of the developer tools. Also included was an early looseleaf copy of Inside Macintosh. In the section about fonts, I recall that there were earlier, more generic names for the "city" fonts in screen captures illustrating font menus. "Chicago" was called "System" and so on. Unfortunately, I seem to have lost or tossed that copy of Inside Macintosh long ago, so I can't verify it.
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@Mark:
Here's a link to a .pdf which might be the one you had.
https://archive.org/details/bitsavers_applemacInionalEdition1985_53888388
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The one I had was earlier than that. That one is from 1985. The one I had was a much less polished draft version from mid 1984.0
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Perhaps this copy from 1984 for two binders (instead of the earlier 3 binders):Mark Simonson said:The one I had was earlier than that. That one is from 1985. The one I had was a much less polished draft version from mid 1984.
https://archive.org/details/bitsavers_applemacIn84_27699101
(Here’s the The Font Manager Programmer’s Guide section.)
and Volume 2:
https://archive.org/details/bitsavers_applemacIn84_23664048
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Thanks! Those are really interesting, but apparently not the copy I had. They used to mail packets with chapter updates every few weeks. Seems like it was in one of those.
Anyway, this is getting way off-topic.1
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