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illuminem summarises for you the essential news of the day. Read the full piece in The Wall Street Journal or enjoy below:
🗞️ Driving the news: A once-obscure “skinny serif” typeface style — a narrow, bookish font family with delicate lines and small decorative wings — is suddenly everywhere
• Tech companies (including AI firm Perplexity), luxury brands, publishers and even the White House have embraced this condensed serif look, prompting admiration from designers and backlash from typographic purists who say the trend has gone too far
🔭 The context: The resurgence draws inspiration from 20th-century print design and iconic campaigns like Apple’s “Think Different”
• Designers seeking warmth and sophistication are turning away from minimalistic sans-serifs that dominated the 2010s
• Perplexity’s VP of design, Henry Modisett, helped spark the shift by rejecting futuristic, sci-fi branding and pushing a refined retro aesthetic
• As the look spread through tech, media and politics, the condensed serif became a modern shorthand for seriousness, trustworthiness and “intellectual cool”
🌍 Why it matters for the planet: While the trend is stylistic, it reflects a deeper shift in communication — including how climate, sustainability and public-interest messages are framed visually
• Typography shapes trust and comprehension, and the migration toward serif fonts mirrors broader efforts to convey credibility in an era of misinformation
• For sustainability-focused organizations, these aesthetic choices increasingly influence how effectively data, risks and climate narratives reach the public
⏭️ What's next: Design experts expect brands to overuse the style, triggering eventual backlash and a new counter-trend — likely something bolder, quirkier or more maximalist
• For now, though, condensed serifs continue their sweep through corporate identity systems, government communications and digital interfaces
💬 One quote: “He kept coming back to t hat slender, bookish typeface — famously used in Apple’s ‘Think Different’ campaign.” — WSJ reporting on Perplexity’s design pivot
📈 One stat: 1 major font family — the condensed serif — has now become simultaneously dominant across Big Tech, luxury marketing and political communications, an unusual convergence in modern branding
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