Syntax (typeface)

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Syntax is a family of typefaces designed by Swiss designer Hans Eduard Meier. He created it in 1968 as a sans-serif, then added serif versions. The design process started in 1954, with brush lettering that was refined into balanced, monoline letterforms. Between 1968 and 1972 Meier added more weights and variations. Adobe digitized the original design in 1989 and expanded the family to bold and ultrabold styles, giving it several roman styles and an italic in the lightest weight.

Meier described Syntax as a sans-serif face modeled on Renaissance serifs like Sabon and Bembo. The uppercase has a wide proportion, and the terminals are angled to give a sense of movement. The lowercase a and g are two-storey. The italics blend humanist forms with some slanted sans-serif influence, keeping the two-storey a.

Jan Tschichold praised Syntax for being very easy to read and well designed. Bitstream released a version called Humanist 531, which did not include an italic. Infinitype produced Saxony, which includes an italic and a medium weight. A Cyrillic version was developed for ParaType in 1999.

Syntax was chosen by Niklaus Wirth for the Oberon operating system, and Meier worked with Wirth at ETH on hand-made bitmap versions before font anti-aliasing existed. In 1995 Linotype revised and expanded the family, adding italics to all weights, old-style figures, proportional figures, small caps in the lighter weights, and Cyrillic in the regular and bold. The Linotype Syntax family was released in 2000 and includes a variant with serifs called Linotype Syntax Lapidar, available in Text and Display forms, with the same character sets and weights.

There are also additional Lapidar variants and a Serif Display, among others, with OpenType features like old-style figures and small caps. An Arabic variant called Badiya, by Nadine Chahine, adds two roman fonts and supports Arabic, Persian, and Urdu, with tabular numerals.

Syntax has won design awards, including Linotype Syntax’s TDC2 2000 honor and Bitstream’s Cyrillic version recognition at Kyrillitsa'99. It has been used in publications and media worldwide, including newspapers, guides, magazines, and even early Sinclair computer materials.