Charts · 04

The typography genome

28 families of Latin type from Gutenberg’s Textura to variable fonts, dated to their first exemplar, in five lanes. Hover a node and the specimen sets itself in a live font of that style, so the difference between a Garalde and a Didone is something you see rather than read. Solid lines are descent, dotted lines are influence.

The typography genome, 1455 to todayA family tree of Latin type: blackletter, serif, sans serif, monospace and the technology that carries them, with lines showing which styles descend from or were influenced by which.145015001600170018001850190019502000BlackletterSerifSans serifMonospace and displayTechnologyTextura1455Fraktur1513Humanist (Venetian)1470Garalde (Old-style)1495Italic1501Transitional1757Didone (Modern)1784Slab serif (Egyptian)1815Clarendon1845Times New Roman1932Fraunces2020Fat face1810Courier1955Recursive2019Grotesque1816Akzidenz-Grotesk1898Johnston1916Futura1927Gill Sans1928Helvetica1957Univers1957Frutiger1976Inter2017PostScript Type 11984TrueType1991OpenType1996Web fonts (WOFF)2009Variable fonts2016

Notes

Classification follows Vox-ATypI (1954) where it helps and ignores it where it does not: humanist, garalde, transitional, didone and slab for the serifs; grotesque, neo-grotesque, humanist and geometric for the sans. Dates are first exemplars: Jenson’s roman 1470, Griffo’s italic 1501, Baskerville 1757, Didot 1784, Figgins’s Egyptian 1815, Caslon’s sans 1816, Akzidenz-Grotesk 1898, Johnston 1916, Futura 1927, Helvetica and Univers 1957, OpenType 1.8 with variations 2016.

The originals are not on Google Fonts, so each specimen names the stand-in it is set in. Sources: Robert Bringhurst, The Elements of Typographic Style; Stephen Coles, The Anatomy of Type; Monotype and Berthold specimen histories; the OpenType 1.8 specification (2016).

Companion to the Love Letters series on the blog and to Kern, the variable-font explorer.