The Skinny Font Taking Over Tech Firms and the White House

BY KATIE DEIGHTON

After decades of obscurity, a bookish style is everywhere. Some say it’s gone too far.

Henry Modisett wanted his employer to stand out. Competitors of the artificial-intelligence firm Perplexity were embracing their science-fiction roots with futuristic branding that felt cold to him. So Modisett, the firm’s vice president of design, looked to the past.

He plowed through graphicdesign books and tomes of logos featuring obscure examples like Hungarian oil companies from the ’80s. But he kept coming back to a slender, bookish typeface famously used in Apple’s “Think Different” campaign. Modisett in 2023 began slipping a cousin of the font into Perplexity’s software and marketing materials.

“It felt fresh,” he said. Not anymore. Serif—a family of typeface known for small lines and decorative “wings”—has gone mainstream. Again. Look around and you’ll start noticing the likes of Baskerville Regular and

Editorial New everywhere, from ads for New Balance sneakers to David protein-bar packaging.

When President Trump returned to office, his administration swiftly replaced Joe Biden’s wide geometric fonts of Decimal and Mercury with skinny serifs. “The Trump Gold Card Is Here,” declares the page for permanent-residency applications in an extra- large version of a font called Instrument Serif.

Even Nike, known for its bold and chunky exhortations to “Just Do It,” has started playing with more delicate, serif lettering. So have Pepsi, the nonalcohol aperitif company Ghia and sunglasses maker Oakley. Posters for food writer Alison Roman’s latest book tour are covered in the font. Perplexity sells tote bags and baseball caps sporting the winged type.

“It feels retro without being kitschy,” said Jordan Egstad, creative director and co-designer of Instrument Serif, which was made for the design agency Instrument. “It’s familiar.”

Serif had spent decades in typeface oblivion as startups, luxury brands and food companies adopted blocky letters.

Around 2018 when a raft of fashion houses joined everyone else in ditching their serif logos for wingless alternatives, something flipped. Serif fans railed against what they called “blanding,” the phenomenon of every corporation twisting their brands into the same minimal design. By 2023, serif fonts began to return.

“Much needed,” wrote one X poster on the serif return. “What a time to be alive!”

“Lot of disturbing things happening in the world,” wrote another, “but at least serif fonts are making a comeback.”

“Minimalism is dead,” declared the City University of New York’s creative director, Alberto Maristany, who chose a custom serif font for the college’s latest recruitment ad campaign. “People want to see your character. People value expression.”

It’s a condensed serif in particular that’s now sweeping the nation. The last time this style of typography took off, Ronald Reagan was in office and the country was undergoing a financial and technological upheaval.

Ads from American Express, which unveiled its Platinum card in 1984, featured Carol Channing in long gloves holding a diamond and “Don’t leave home without it” printed in a svelte serif. Around the same time, Apple adopted the custom version of the serif font ITC Garamond that would later be immortalized in its “Think Different” ads.

Designers say companies are turning to the old fonts to convey warmth and humanity by tapping into nostalgia for the pre-Internet days.

“There’s a lot of anxiety around technology and the way we engage with it,” said Joseph Alessio, a designer and art director in Oakland, Calif.

It’s all a bit rattling to typography nerds, some of whom don’t want to see their art form used by businesses to font-wash their reputations.

“I myself am unequivocally guilty of this serif-as-humanity signaling,” wrote designer Keya Vadgama in a March Substack post, adding, “there is a certain irony in using distinctly human typographic touches to present something fundamentally non-human.”

Mostly the serif aficionados are put off by the ubiquity.

The main target of their ire is the rapid adoption of Instrument Serif, the two-yearold font that is free to license. It’s on over 16,000 websites.

Alessio is one of a handful of designers pushing back against its overuse.

“The problem isn’t the font, it’s the herd mentality,” said Fons Mans, founder of the Dutch design studio Offgrid. “We’re in an era where every company wants to be ‘distinct,’ yet they all end up choosing the same typeface.”

Instrument Serif’s designers have watched its spread with detachment. Co-creator Rodrigo Fuenzalida describes his fonts as independent, living beings.

“I raise them and let them out in the wild,” he said, “and know they will do whatever they want.”