Semi Serif typefaces

[Member Mar…]

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Hello, I am a Graphic Design student very interested in type design.

I have a question about semi serif typefaces. Is it up to the designers will to decide which serifs to remove or are there guidelines?

I am new to the forum so I am not sure if this is the right place for this thread. If this is not I will be glad to move it to the right place as long as someone notifies me about it. Thanks in advice.

[Member hra…]

Great topic. (I think General Discussion is a fine place.)

It's always up to the designer. :-) But I can think of three -potentially combinable- approaches: what turns the designer on, æsthetically; what chirography (which sort of means handwriting) likes to see, mostly head serifs on the left and foot serifs on the right; and what presumably increases readability by differentiating boumas (shapes of clusters of letters, often whole words). This last one is my favorite, but I have to admit it applies best to text font; for display fonts the second can work better, or the first if the font's intent is to be idiosyncratic.

According to its designer the serifs in Rotis Semi-Serif was designed with readability-amplification in mind. Which does not mean it works to that effect - but at least it tries hard, which is more than can be said for most semi-serif designs.

hhp