This is correct. Almost all of the original fonts were serif or cursive, and they don’t read as well on mobile screens. In at least the case of Google, this was a driving force behind the decision to go sans serif.
8 Likes
Oh the palette is much richer! Check it:
ash
dun
blond/e
buff
ecru
fawn
greige
khaki
light umber
ochre
pale brown
sand
tan
taupe
13 Likes
For some reason this reminds me of the Jane Seymor “Open Hearts” ads. Wherein, of course, the camera slowly pans across and reveals that her studio is full of dozens of the same red single-stroke painting. It was supposed to be somehow touching, but just read as “All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy…” (I couldn’t find that video or a screenshot of that reveal, but…)
5 Likes
What an interesting thought. I never would have figured that.
That one I find bizarre. A lot of the other examples are moving to something more legible and more accessible to people with various disabilities.
That Lord & Taylor example isn’t going to help screen readers, it’s a weird halfway between the old logo and plain text.
4 Likes
I’m always wondering how cost factors into this. I know a lot of mass-printed documents’ fonts are driven by the print costs (fonts like Times New Roman are significantly cheaper than Arial) and I imagine there is a lot of branding that is focused on cost cutting through print, signage, letterhead, etc. going on.
3 Likes
I had to build my own logo recently for a personal project and I considered sans-serif but am incredibly glad I went with serifs. It may not be truly great, but at least it’s distinctive.
4 Likes
It costs many millions of dollars to replace all signage, stationary, websites, advertising, clothing tags, etc with a new logo – far, far more than the negligible cost of serifs.
8 Likes
■■■■■, ■■■■■, ■■■■■. Eew.
1 Like
this is why non-designers should not get a say in this sort of thing. there are reasons things are done in design.
7 Likes
And now we see the endgame of the Helvetica fetish. The serif apocalypse. Well played… well played.
6 Likes
it’s sans
s-a-n-s
oof, can breathe now
2 Likes
I hope they’re not just throwing all those serifs away. They get into the food chain.
8 Likes
our only hope: a comic sanslighenment
2 Likes
Signage, sure - but everything else gets bought as needed and I don’t know any company that hangs on to a lot of paper stock in an age where printers delivery in less than a day. The rest just gets absorbed into you normal budget for the year: you will always be buying new stationary, updating the website, cutting new ads, printing new tags, etc. a running change that saves cost on the printing is still a cost savings.
1 Like
I know what you’re saying, but the “serifs cost more” thing is sort of a hold-over from the days of metal type, where serifs were ink traps – over the course of years, they’d cost a little more, and the dies and type would need to be replaced more often. These days, you can use serifs, sans-serifs, or loopy hand-drawn cursive text and the long-term print cost is the same.
7 Likes
A lot of designers who service large corporations work more like artists, in that the manifesto is more important that the (often mundane, repurposed, or unimaginative) work itself. The most famous and crazy example is the Pepsi Golden Ratio logo re-design:
9 Likes
That is an amazing example of the kind of bonkers BS I used to have to generate (sometimes on the fly) to justify designs in front of corporate clients, though I never invoked the Golden Mean or the earth’s gravitational pull. Those Pepsi logos were painfully bad, with designs that were supposed to evoke different types of smiles for different situations, or something.
8 Likes
and that’s the point. The intern is who they want to be friendly and accessible to. It’s part and parcel of the trend toward blue-chip brands repositioning themselves for millenials by producing ads that literally say “This isn’t your mother’s/parents’/grandparents’ [BRAND]!”
2 Likes
