PMN Caecilia

>PMN Caecilia

How come when you said 'Humanist', I was thinking just of sans? Am I normal?

Usually, humanist does come up in connection with sans-serifs, but it's not so unusual to hear about humanist slab-serifs. Other than PMN Caecilia, the humanist slabs off the top of my head are TheSerif, Chaparral, and the brand new Soho. I also can't resist throwing in Rayuela, which, though not really a slab-serif, does have a distinct humanist quality, greater than that of most non-script typefaces.

Hope these non-sans typefaces could be useful alternatives; I don't mean to hijack the thread. To atone, here's a thread purporting to offer a list of the best humanists sans-serifs: http://typophile.com/node/13281 . Check the list at the very bottom.

Nick, I think, perhaps, it is because of Humanist 521 from the Bitstream library. I have the same thought pattern I think.

Am I normal?
i doubt it. there's no such thing as "normal."

maybe i have it all wrong, but to me , the term humanist refers to letters that are influenced by ductal logic, whether they're sans or serifed type.
in calligraphy, the humanist minuscule is a descendant of the carolingian minuscule. The humanist model of calligraphy is what influenced the earliest Roman (whiteletter) types, particularly those of Nicholas Jenson. The Vox-ATypI classification system uses the term humanist to refer to the Venetian model of type.

Doesn't sound wrong to me, Paul. But I rarely see "humanist" bandied about in regard to serifs (with the exception of typefaces inspired by Italian Renaissance type), maybe because many more serifs are "humanist" by your ductal-logic definition than are sans- and slab-serifs. I'd guess that this comes from the early slab-serifs and sans-serifs not being too concerned with ductus as far as I know until Johnston and Gill in the early 20th c. and Frutiger in 1968. So to say "humanist" doesn't separate a group out as much for serifs as it does for other type genres.

Tiff, I'm with you and Nick -- if someone says "humanist," only sans faces spring to my mind.

I am with Paul D. Hunt, and mine is Pastonchi.

It is odd, though, don't you think Linda? I mean I studied the birth of the roman alphabet and yet I still think of a sans type. Silly!

not so silly, i think the humanist/geometric sans distinguisher makes a lot of sense, whereas we usually use other terms to specify humanist serif types: most of us would probably just call them "Venetian."

Not "silly" at all, Tiff! (And don't tell Chris, but the first font that springs to mind when I think "humanist" is Optima! ;-) )

Paul, you're spot on: any idea why some call them one or the other? (That's probably a stupid question, but....)

any idea why some call them one or the other?

because we English-speaking folk don't follow the VOX classification system.

That figures -- in the "old days" the English-speaking world didn't "do" metric either. At least here in Canada, the young'uns barely know an inch or a degree Fahrenheit these days.

Time changes things, of course....

"don’t tell Chris,"

No sweat, I won't tell him :-P

ChrisL