‘The origins of sans serif type’ research establishes that serif-less typography was far more prolific and public-facing than ever thought likely, and includes new outputs in response to it. These are: ETRVSCA Sans: typeface and type specimens; Development of Serif-Less Type research timeline infographic (2020, Design Product Typeface and Type Specimens), accompanied by the book chapter (2020) ’The Serif-Less Letters of John Soane’. Chapter 14, pp.215-228, Pen, print and communication in the eighteenth century. Liverpool University Press.
- Submitting institution
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Anglia Ruskin University Higher Education Corporation
- Unit of assessment
- 32 - Art and Design: History, Practice and Theory
- Output identifier
- 908
- Type
- K - Design
- Open access status
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- Month
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- Year
- 2020
- URL
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https://figshare.com/s/f583bae3fe1d1f98e4db
- Supplementary information
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- Request cross-referral to
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- Output has been delayed by COVID-19
- No
- COVID-19 affected output statement
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- Forensic science
- No
- Criminology
- No
- Interdisciplinary
- Yes
- Number of additional authors
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- Research group(s)
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- Proposed double-weighted
- No
- Reserve for an output with double weighting
- No
- Additional information
- This historical and practice-based research, traces the origins of eighteenth-century serif-less (sans serif) letterforms. It identifies Sir John Soane’s contribution to a piranesian model - when applying serif-less ‘antique’ letterforms to the neoclassical. A time-line of pivotal Italian and English figures are tracked from the late seventeenth century, until the release of the first sans serif metal typeface c.1814-16. Applied research revives the primitive letterforms of republican Rome and the earlier pre-roman serif-less alphabets of the Etruscans and the Greeks within a new typeface that represents the primordial or prototype sans.
The search for the origin of today’s commercial sans serif typography has become something of a ‘holy grail’ for type historians. This folio of research provides the new knowledge that fills the void prior to Soane’s exhibited plan drawing: ‘Design for a British Senate House’ that contained two distinctive title blocks of deliberate sans letterforms. This drawing was, until now, considered the earliest known evidence of a near geometrical, linear sans serif letterform. Type historians (Mosley; Howes) believed that the serif-less form originates within the letterforms of Greece and the informal inscriptions of the
early Romans. But what inspired Sir John Soane and influenced his contemporaries to use it, for what seemed to be, for the first time?
This research establishes that serif-less typography was far more prolific and public-facing than ever thought likely. New outputs embed historical research and revive period sources within an original font which constitutes a significant contribution - confirming that Etruscan inscriptional letterforms are the progenitors of the sans serif typeface, and represent the primitivist ideologies of the eighteenth-century. Dissemination provides a proto-sans for contemporary practitioners where ETRVSCA Sans represents: the true source of sans typography within our increasingly technological world – perhaps
even the origin of modernism itself?
- Author contribution statement
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- Non-English
- No
- English abstract
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