Slab Serif vs Wood Type
スラブセリフ / 木活字ディスプレイ
Both sit in Type Classification, so the question is not what they belong to but how they behave. One is style and the other technique. They are reached for with different intent, which is the fastest way to tell them apart.
Slab Serif
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Square serifs as thick as the strokes turned letters into machine structures. Industrial society's advertising and notices found their sturdy voice.
Wood Type
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Gigantic letters cut from wood for broadside posters created the display vocabulary of extreme condensation, extension and ornament.
| Slab Serif | Wood Type | |
|---|---|---|
| Era | 1815– | 1827– |
| Family | Type Classification | Type Classification |
| Kind | Style | Technique |
| Cues | Slab serifs / Even strokes / Sturdy letterforms / Mechanical repetition | Gigantic sizes / Extreme condensing and extending / Carved ornament / Ink scuff and material grain |
| Best used for | Logos and product marking for tools and workwear that sell durability · Newspaper and dictionary headings that need bold type holding up at small sizes | Large announcements and banners that must maximize words within a fixed sheet · Signs and menus for eating places borrowing the air of markets and shows |
| Type | Choose a family with even weight steps and mix caps with lowercase | Change face and width by line, choosing widths to fit each word |
| Composition | Combine with rules and boxes, aligning elements to a visible grid | Justify every line to the full sheet and divide bands with rules |
| Material | It survives ink spread on paper and stamping into metal or cloth | Firm impression showing grain, few colors, chips and wear left in |
| Caution | A heavy slab used for long text packs the lines black and stops reading, so sturdiness turns into sheer heaviness. | Multiplying faces line by line without ranking them flattens the order of emphasis, and no one can tell what to read first. |