SlabSerif Type Category

Video Transcription

Welcome back everyone, to our short talks on The Classifications of Typography here at Noble Desktop.

The type category we are looking at in this video is Slab Serif.

That’s right, along with the Serif classification, there are Slab Serif fonts. These are also known as Egyptian or simply Slab.

The first known examples of a slab-serif letterform are woodblock lettering found on advertisements from the city of London around 1810.

This important figure is Vincent Figgins.

And Figgins was a British typographer who established his own type foundry in 1792; He was extremely successful and helped to define the styles of British printing in the nineteenth century.

He is likely the creator of the first commercially available Slab-serif typeface called "Antique", which appeared in a type-specimen dated 1815 (but probably issued to the public around 1817).

These classic examples illustrate how this category of serif fonts has more even stroke widths and an emphasis on the Serifs themselves.

In general, they tend to be bolder than common serif fonts.

The Rockwell font in particular is a distinctive version of a geometric slab serif design, which has retained its popularity since it appeared in the 1930s.

In these next examples, you can see how this category has the distinct ability to evoke the feeling the designer wishes to convey through their design work.

We are starting with this group of frames from the opening titles of the film the Pink Panther circa 1963. The typeface it uses is the Face Crazy Loot. Due to its loose stylized rendering, the typeface borders on a decorative face. Nevertheless, the use of this particular font communicates something that on one hand wants to take itself seriously, but in truth is zany and playful.

Now aside from the Pig Logo itself this Flying Pigs meatball packaging and the accompanying recipe use a wide range of fonts (or variations) of the Rockwell Slab serif Typeface. This is a really strong example of the way in which different weights and styles including bold, regular, and italic create a rich and robust look and feel.

Finally, this “Spotlight story” page from the Time Magazine website and these additional pages from the website and Time magazine itself, uses a mix of different fonts, however again we can see the way in which the Rockwell font calls attention to key content for both headline and subhead placements. Rockwell is distinctive due to a handful of unique characteristics that it possesses. The use of spacing, its letter weights, and subtle changes between regular, medium, and bold styles give it a range of expressions all within a single page design.

Next up in our line-up on the classifications of typography will be the sans serif category.