Humanist (Venetian) Serif vs Palatino
Palatino was influenced by Humanist (Venetian) Serif — rooted in Italian Renaissance letterforms.
Humanist (Venetian) Serif
The earliest roman printing types, cut in Renaissance Italy to imitate the humanist scribal hand. Warm, sturdy, and unmistakably pen-formed, with a strongly slanted stress and a sloping crossbar on the lowercase e.
- Steeply inclined (oblique) axis of stress
- Low to moderate stroke contrast, heavy overall color
- Sloping bar on the lowercase 'e'
- Heavily bracketed, often blunt asymmetric serifs
- Short ascenders/descenders with sturdy, rounded proportions
Palatino
Hermann Zapf's 1949 old-style serif — a calligrapher's roman with broad, open letterforms named after the Renaissance writing master Giambattista Palatino, drawn to stay legible on the rough paper of its day.
- Broad-nib calligraphic modulation in the strokes
- Generously bracketed serifs with a slight cupping
- Wide, open letterforms and a large x-height
- Open apertures and roomy counters for rough-paper printing
- Angled (oblique) old-style stress from the pen
At a glance
| Humanist (Venetian) Serif | Palatino | |
|---|---|---|
| Era | 1460s–1490s | 1949 |
| Discipline | Typography | Typography |
| Region | Italy, Venice | Germany |
| Family | Serif | Old-style Serif, Humanist Serif |
| Formal traits | humanist, old-style, bracketed-serif, oblique-stress | bracketed-serif, calligraphic, moderate-contrast, wide-set |
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