Some comments below might make less sense outside the context of the qz.com article's polemic. But it's more substantive (not to mention fairer) to link to the original source.
> The traditional excuse for stripping away ornament has been about improving legibility, especially for small screens. This is a fallacy
No, serifs really do have legibility issues, but not for small screens; they cause problems at (very) small font sizes where glyphs are only a handful of pixels tall.
> You can render a serif letter in seven pixels
Yes, but that's pushing it and the legibility will depend on the quality of the font hinting, how the font rasterizer antialiases, and the way subpixels are utilized[1]. Legibility will even depend on the display technology: low resolution fonts on a CRT can be a lot harder to read compared to an LCD. (a shadow mask means phosphors do not align 1-to-1 with pixels[2])
Of course, legibility is in the eye of the beholder, and many people find serifed fonts to be easier to read, while others prefer sans-serif, and some people just don't care. For some people, anything smaller or more complicated than high-contrast 96pt simple sans-serif is unreadable.
> drops the serifs from its logo
A logo, however, is probably (much?) larger than the small font sizes where serifs often have legibility issues.
Who is using CRTs? Mobiles have incredible pixel density, high-pixel-density displays and TVs are becoming the norm, etc. Is this even an issue? Who only has 7 pixels for their text?
Serifs on low resolution fonts didn't gain legibility when LCD market share became dominant.
> Is this even an issue?
Yes, to some people on some devices. While less common than it was a decade ago, old hardware exists[1], poor quality displays exist, and broken hardware exists[2]. However,
> Who only has 7 pixels for their text?
Everybody that used an Apple II, Atari 400/800, Commodore 64? Most 8-bit computers in the era before framebuffers were common used low-resolution hardware fonts[3].
[1] The last time I bought any kind of computer hardware was ~2011; my CPU and LCD monitor are vintage 2008. Wile my LCD displays small fonts very clearly,
[2] I know multiple people that have been stuck using a broken LCD because they cannot afford to replace their old (PowerPC) macbook.
At some point you have to be okay with leaving people behind in some way or another. Where you draw that line is going to depend on your goals, market, etc. but if you want progress in design and/or technology you have to draw the line somewhere.
I hope I’m not coming off as brusque with that attitude. I just think it’s practical. I’m intimately acquainted with using older hardware. I was lucky to have a computer and an internet connection at all as a child but I won’t pretend that it wasn’t a punch in the gut every time a website would take ages to load, crawl when it did load or a game wouldn’t run at all. It hurt when the line was drawn at broadband or faster CPUs/GPUs but I’m glad they didn’t wait for me to catch up.
There’s a tug between creators and consumers but the drive toward new technology is a good thing. Eventually it becomes more affordable or can be had for reasonable prices second hand.
That said, I don’t think that precludes reasonable accommodation. If your website isn’t an application it should be readable without JavaScript even if it’s ugly, screen readers should work, users should be able to adjust their font size even if it’s ugly, etc.
This is from one section of the logo trends article (https://www.logolounge.com/articles/2018-logo-trends). If you look through the pictures of logos in the full article, all but a very few use sans serif fonts.
A more accurate title may be, "A few new logos use serif fonts".
> Our infatuation with the creation of implied heritage really deserves greater attention than these two paragraphs allow. The new culture of small shoppe business and personal attention are fiercely fighting the truly established bluebloods for the same share of consumer attention. Heritage that's only inches deep is winning through smart design, even when the identity reads ESTB 2018.
I find this really interesting. Although it might just be a design fad in some cases, it does make me smile a bit to see an "Est. 20xx", because it reads as a desire that the brand (often a physical store) intends to stick around long enough for that declaration to mean something.
Support for blackletter was the default position of pre-WWII German nationalists. Hitler banned it during the war because, of all things, blackletter would have required two typesets for multi-lingual publications in occupied territories, and because it would have been hard for occupied populations to read (German was to become the new lingua franca, after all).
Not that I would expect Varg to be that well-read on the vagaries of the wartime German military administration's printing office.
Though tedious, I've enjoyed the process of collecting high-res SVG logos for all projects and products in the cloud native space. There's a lot of variety!
There are some really beautiful logos there. Hats off to the artists out there that can make something so interesting and identifying with just a small combination of lines, shapes, and text.
Not sure why sans-serif minimalism should be considered soulless. I don't think I'll ever tire of solid no-nonsense Swiss design, but variety is the spice of life for sure.
I think what happens in Switzerland is that grid-design and sans-serif minimalism is applied with good taste all over the place. It stands out when something is poorly done. In North America, the variety of other styles are applied with no taste or consistency, including those styles taken from the swiss. I'd love to see a very culturally/aesthetically diverse urban landscape with good taste applied to many styles of design.
Edit: Walking around Zurich gave me a weird sense that everything was so consistent as to be too refined and rich. Every woman had the same highly fashionable style, everything cleanly cut, everything sanitized. I'll admit it was a little creepy. Every person I spoke to was more or less a delight, but I felt as though speaking to people would be taboo. Much more so than Downtown Vancouver, though the vibe is often described similarly.
As if everything is deliberately designed. I did notice that Bern is a little different, being a bit of college town I guess lends itself to having slightly older character to it.
San-serif minimalism is timeless. While it doesn't convey any subtext, it is applicable in every situation.
I'd argue it's the complete opposite of soulless. As the only message it conveys is how you feel about the company. If Verizon had a cool tiger logo, you might think, "man, Verizon is a shit company, but their logo is cool af." But with a simple logo, you just think, "Man, Verizon is a shit company."
> The more humanist quality of some serif fonts are playing directly to a generation looking to find personal value and worth, or a warm place to feel comfort.
In other words, a low-level oscillation from an old generation of companies to a new generation who want to look different and nicer.
I guess one could argue an article title isn't a logo, except that the Quartz site uses sans for it's logo and menus, and links, and all kinds of other elements, however you want to break them down.
No doubt the author would change some things if she got the chance!
I don't find it soulless, though - it's closer to a geometric sans-serif like Futura, not the Noto clones that Dalton Maag has been churning out for Netflix, Airbnb et al.
Can someone tell me if this is because designers like to copy whatever look is in season? Or is it mostly the clients / managers who are afraid to have their brand identity be too different?
I knew a designer who couldn't tell you what made text legible, or how a grid system worked. But they were good at copying certain styles that were popular. They would read those articles like "20 stunning sites with flat design," pick a few to copy, and then give the client a look-a-like site, regardless if the design made sense for their business. Always thought they were a hack, but they were employed, so good for them.
Edit: Just wanted to point out that the return of serifs is probably a good thing - good designers seeing that minimalist logos are overdone and wanting to stand out. My comments are more directed at what is inevitably to come - hordes of smaller companies copying the most superficial aspects of this trend.
Typography and logo design have fashions just like almost everything else. There are good reasons for the relatively simple logos and wordmarks you see today--mostly around legibility in small sizes because of mobile.
But, unless someone's deliberately cultivating a retro look, consider any batch of random logos from 20 years ago and compare them to a batch of current ones and you're going to see a lot of common patterns.
If you are talking design that is used for logos and whatnot, that's on the client: they make the final call after all. Some might just take whatever the designer gives them, but I imagine most want to do some bikeshedding.
In fact I suspect most of the value (for the designers) of those exercises where designers involve the client and make mindmaps and select "values" and whatnot is to trick the client into a self-made cage, resulting in manageable bikeshedding.
If you don't know what makes text legible, and you can't really justify a particular font choice- I think there is an argument to be made that following whatever the latest best-practice is, is in fact a sensible/desirable behavior.
(Until the point where you're changing your layout every three months)
You could ask the same question about fashion. I think the answer is simply memes — not in the modern jokey sense, but the real definition of a contagious idea.
Some comments below might make less sense outside the context of the qz.com article's polemic. But it's more substantive (not to mention fairer) to link to the original source.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html