1. How Humanist Type Began
2. Characteristics
3. A Timeline of Humanist type
   1. Johnston
   2. Gill Sans
   3. Frutiger
   4. Eras
   5. FF Meta
   6. Verdana
   7. Calibri
   8. Open Sans
   9. BBC Reith
   10. Ghost
4. Modern Britain
5. Bibliography

Sans serif type, in print, first emerged in the 1800s. Yet it was only in the 1910s that a few standout sans serifs emerged begining the new age of simple un-furished type.

From Eric Gill (paedophile)’s (1927) and Edward Johnston (friend of paedophile)’s (1916), the design subcatagory of the humanist sans serifs emerged.

This design language went on to define the look of the web, accessible type, and of prestige British institutions.

The key design features are the open counters, and angled endings. The italic form of humanist type has a more fluid design taking inspiration from handwritten text.

Designed for the London Underground Edward Johnston, calligrapher by trade, was commissioned to produce a letterset that belonged "unmistakably to the twentieth century". He built Johnston on the ideas formed from the transcription of the inscription on the Trajan's Column – a roman column that fascinated type designers of the era.
Johnston proposed one of the first sans serif fit for high class professional use.

Eric Gill (paedophile)

Adrian Frutiger was commissioned to design signage for the new Charles de Gaulle airport in the outskirts of Paris. He looked, not to the pervasive rigidity of the in-vogue Helvetica or his own Univers but instead engaged in a both incredibly creative and surprisingly mathematical process of designing a font to define an airport experience. Each letter form to be viewed at an angle from 20m away. Frutiger redefined humanist type as a “type” of type but also as a tool for quiet legibility in the new 1960s Swiss type revolution.

In stark contrast to Frutiger, Bolton & Hollenstein’s Eras breaks every rule of simplistic invisible Swiss design; building on the original humanist idea Eras takes inspiration from roman type with the serifs chopped off. Eras’ 2° angle and broken lines on the a, P and R leaves it in a space somewhere between fun and awkward.

Known as both the “Helvetica of the 90s.” and “Erik Spiekermann’s antithesis to Helvetica” FF Meta finds a balance between a fun filled display font and a traditional simple body font. Designed for Deutsche Bundespost Meta intended to save trees by cutting the page use of the German phonebook whilst still shining plastered on the side of a Van.

Bundespost rejected it leading to Spiekermann releasing it later with his company FontFont. Meta’s humanist characteristics led it to its success when, packaged with the mac, Meta’s open counters perfect for avoiding the pitfalls of un-hinted down sampling allowed its ascent to a super-font of the early digital era.

An iPad baby of type, Verdana was one of the first typefaces designed exclusively for digital display. Matthew Carter was hired to design Verdana as a new Windows system font to replace the bitmap MS Sans Serif.
Due to the challenges of such a binary display, Verdana makes use of a suit of features: a heightened x-height, a gaping kern and humanistic wide open counters to prevent letters merging as well as a bold that is ~2x the weight of its book weight such that when at its smallest size, it’s still noticeable.

Verdana’s now also famous for “Verdana Gate” in which IKEA switched away from the traditional much loved Futura aim of uniting its print and web presence as Verdana was one of the few then “web-safe fonts”. These days IKEA use Noto IKEA an altered version of Noto Sans.