At One Place

Sans-serif typefaces

22 sans-serif typefaces, oldest first.

Typeface Year Designer What it signals now
Akzidenz-Grotesk 1896 H. Berthold AG Swiss modernism before Helvetica existed. Sober, industrial, German.
Franklin Gothic 1902 Morris Fuller Benton American newspapers, headlines, twentieth-century news.
Johnston 1916 Edward Johnston London. Specifically and only London.
Futura 1927 Paul Renner Bauhaus modernism, and then anything wanting to look confident and geometric.
Gill Sans 1928 Eric Gill Britain, mid-century. Railways, the BBC, Penguin paperbacks.
Helvetica 1957 Max Miedinger and Eduard Hoffmann Neutral corporate modernism. So common it reads as no choice at all — which was the intent.
Univers 1957 Adrian Frutiger Systematic Swiss design. The typeface for people who find Helvetica sloppy.
Optima 1958 Hermann Zapf Elegant, slightly classical. Cosmetics, memorials, luxury that does not want to shout.
Eurostile 1962 Aldo Novarese The future, as imagined between 1965 and 1985. Squarish, technical, spaceship.
Frutiger 1976 Adrian Frutiger Wayfinding. Airports, hospitals, road signs, anything you read while moving.
Bell Centennial 1978 Matthew Carter A phone book. Extreme constraint made visible.
Arial 1982 Robin Nicholas and Patricia Saunders A default. Something nobody chose.
Chicago 1984 Susan Kare The original Macintosh, and the first iPod.
FF Meta 1991 Erik Spiekermann The 1990s doing corporate identity properly. Warm, readable, slightly quirky.
Verdana 1996 Matthew Carter A website designed between 1998 and 2008.
Gotham 2000 Tobias Frere-Jones American, optimistic, competent. The 2008 Obama campaign and everything that copied it.
Calibri 2004 Lucas de Groot A Word document from between 2007 and 2023.
Roboto 2011 Christian Robertson Android. Google. An app.
Open Sans 2011 Steve Matteson A website built between 2012 and 2018. Neutral, open, free.
San Francisco 2014 Apple An Apple device, since 2015.
Inter 2017 Rasmus Andersson A software product designed after about 2019. Screen-native, neutral, everywhere.
Aptos 2023 Steve Matteson A Word document written after 2023.

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