Sans-serif typefaces compensate for their basic handicap – an absence of serifs – with a softening modulation typical of roman typefaces. Grotesques often inherit a hypertrophy of the x-height, which is very efficient, but not very beautiful. They are like dogs with fat bodies and short legs.

Why do we love old Garamonds? Beside beautifully modeled details, they possess aspect-ratios of parts within characters that timelessly and beauteously parallel the anatomy of the human body. Proportions of thighs, arms or legs have their universal rules, but cannot be measured by pixels and millimeters. These sometimes produce almost unnoticeable inner tensions, perceptible only very slowly, after a period of living with the type.

Serifed typefaces are open to many possibilities in this regard; when a character is mounted on its edges with serifs, what is happening in between is more freely up to the designer. In the case of grotesques, everything is visible; the shape of the letter must exist in absolute nakedness and total simplicity, and must somehow also be spirited and original.