Why the Coolest Brands in the World Have Again Fallen in Love With the Serif
By Lauren CochraneFonts, like most aesthetic things, go through trend cycles. But in recent years it has seemed that serifs – the twiddly bits on the edges of letters – had become a thing of the past. The only fonts we paid any attention to were twiddly bit-free, straight-edged, or sans-serif. See the striking Futura originally taken up by artist Barbara Kruger and reworked on box T-shirts for skate brand Supreme, the slightly cuter Apercu used on that perfect millennial pink backdrop for Glossier, the brilliantly basic Comic Sans or American Apparel’s Helvetica, a font so exalted it had a film made about it in 2007.
Slowly but surely, however, those serifs are making a comeback. Netflix’s shit show Stranger Things, with the ITC Benguiat Bold Condensed eighties font in its title sequence, perhaps breadcrumbed the trend. This year, serifs seem to be everywhere you look. Eyewear legend Oakley has signalled a new direction with Garamond Condensed this summer, taking its cue from the font used in the brand’s eighties adverts. Nike – a brand also synonymous with Futura with its original logo in the font – has begun to mix it up. The advertising campaign for the Olympics this summer included Palatino Regular, which even makes its way to its classic slogan ‘Just Do It’. The Gentlewoman – a magazine with a logo so sans serif it doesn’t even use capital letters – has added Tarnac to its latest issue, for autumn and winter 2024. A serif font that dates back to 1905, it’s known for its use on signs in rural France. Chic, non?
Smaller brands have been on this shift for a while now too. Apollo Bagels, the New York chain sometimes seen as serving the best in the city, uses a sweet retro serif font for its signs. Called DaVinci, it was designed by Virgile Flores, who also worked on the typography (serifed, of course) of A24 venture 2AM. Health supplement brand AG1 has adverts all over public transport currently, with text in JHA Times Now, a perhaps unlikely new take on Times New Roman. Once seen by type nerds as the height of stuffy and trad, this font’s unfashionable status may have done wonders for its new position, at the vanguard of graphic design. After more than 20 years of the clean, neat san-serif font, twiddles at the bottom of letters look fresh again.
But, beyond novelty, what is behind the serif revival? Perhaps it’s a rejection of the sans-serif’s association with a millennial aesthetic and lifestyle in the 2010s. This was an era where direct-to-consumer start-ups boomed, often with a sans-serif font and pastel colours whether they’re selling mattresses, pans, or mobile banking apps. Writing about this look in 2020, The Cut described it thus: “these aren’t ads that bellow or hector; they whisper, in restrained sans-serif fonts, or chastely flirt, in letters with curves and bounce. They’re ads, sure, but they’re so well designed.”
Four years on and well-designed is – well – a bit icky. Aesthetics now are grungier, often with nostalgia for a pre-digital age, a focus for a generation who never knew a time before smartphones. Serif fonts dig into that – Times New Roman dates back to 1931, first commissioned for The Times newspaper, while Palantino was first created at the end of the 1940s, inspired by Giambattista Palatino, a 16th century Italian calligrapher. That gives an authenticity and a retro feel, one that appeals to the kind of consumer who might also screenshot images of nineties stars as style inspo.
Saying all of this, it may be that the trend cycle has moved on once again. New logos have been released this year by two stalwarts of our digital world, Spotify and PayPal. The characteristic they have in common? Not a serif in sight.
Lauren Cochrane is Senior Fashion Writer of The Guardian and contributes to publications including The Face, ELLE, Service95, Konfekt and Mr Porter. Based in London, she writes about everything from catwalk shows to footballers’ style and the linguistics of Love Island. She is author of The Ten: The Stories Behind the Fashion Classics. Header image: Nike / Instagram.