Typefaces

We gen­er­al­ly use sans-serif type­faces, which may be clas­si­fied as grotesque, neo-grotesque, hu­man­ist, or ge­o­met­ric. The old­est of these, the grotesque, were lit­tle more than serif type­faces with the ser­ifs re­moved, mak­ing them look weird and grotesque. Grotesque type­faces fre­quent­ly have the word "goth­ic" in their names, e.g. Franklin Goth­ic. A spin-off of the grotesque style is the neo-grotesque, which are the most pop­u­lar sans-serif fonts, in­clud­ing Ari­al and Hel­veti­ca.

Then there are the hu­man­ist type­faces, in­clud­ing our own EB Sans. Mi­crosoft's Tre­buchet is a clas­sic hu­man­ist font with the stan­dard hu­man­ist ten­den­cies, styl­ized to look friend­ly but not threat­en­ing. Others in this vein are Op­ti­ma and Gill Sans. Of course, it is pos­si­ble to go over­board in that di­rec­tion, and then you get Com­ic Sans.

The fi­nal clas­si­fi­ca­tion is called ge­o­met­ric, which looks ex­act­ly like it sounds: ge­o­met­ric-look­ing sym­met­ric shapes based up­on in­scrip­tion­al Ro­man cap­i­tals but with a "eu­ro­trash" feel and lit­tle to no imag­i­na­tion. Fu­tu­ra is the best-known ex­am­ple of the ge­o­met­ric sans-serif. We avoid it for good rea­son.