Typography & fonts

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(Icon: detail from the title of Bringhurst's Elements of Typographic Style. Banner: details from pages 6 and 12, ibid.)

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Nebula Sans (nebulasans.com)

submitted 1 week ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 week ago (2 children)

@[email protected] @[email protected]

I read what both of you linked. To be perfectly honest? I still don't really get it. Kinda seems like it's called humanist just because?

The first Roman type was derived from calligraphy, so the shape of letterforms is based on formal writing with a flat brush or a broad nib pen. The term Humanist has traditionally been used for serif typefaces, but nowadays there is also Humanist Sans.

Today we’re going to take a look at just one of those terms, namely “Humanist”. You may have come across this term before (or you may even be thinking, what the hell’s that?). The term Humanist is part of the nomenclature that describes type classification. During the 1800s a system of classifying type was derived, and although numerous other systems and subsets of this system exist, this basically is it: Humanist | Old Style | Transitional | Modern Slab Serif (Egyptian) | Sans Serif

? ??? ?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 week ago (2 children)

Yeah, looks like they weirdly happened to want to describe their font like that unaware that the word already had a concrete meaning in typography context.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 week ago

Have the feeling this might be one of those things where I hyperfixate, do a deep dive, and never get an actually satisfying answer.....

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 week ago

There is at least contrast, as in variation in line width like you'd see in caligraphy, it's just very subtle. But yeah if they're using humanist font design features it feels like they're using them very sparingly and in extremely subtle ways

I'm no expert but I see what you mean 😅

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Yeah I'm not actually sure where that specific term came from as a descriptor for that kind of typeface. It might just be that someone decided to call it that because they felt it expressed their reason for designing in the way they did

Perhaps they felt moving away from the formality of blackletter felt more accessible at a time when not everyone could read, and was more "human"

🤷‍♂️

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 week ago

Probably just gonna do my best not to think about it too much. Like I said to @[email protected] this seems like a thing that could take all my free time for the next few weeks, and leave me disappointed with no real answers. 🤷