When it comes to typography, I’m a sucker for big, bold and punchy titles. One common way to achieve magnetic, attention-grabbing headlines is to use a slab serif typeface. As usual when choosing a typeface, it is easy to become overwhelmed by the sheer number of high-quality options, so I decided to post five of the most popular slab serifs I’ve come across.

Quick anatomy of a slab serif

Slab serifs, a subset of normal serif typefaces, are characterized by thick, square serifs of approximately the same weight as the actual letterform. With the exception of Clarendon, the five typefaces shown below are also marked by a uniform stroke weight throughout the entire letterform, whereas a normal serif usually has varying stoke weights.

The heavy feel of slab serifs lend themselves to be naturally good choices for headlines. I also think slab serifs tend to work better as small-caps than normal serifs. However, because they generally have thicker, over-exaggerated serifs, slabs do not read smoothly at smaller sizes and are not well-suited for body copy.

If interested you can read more about slab serifst Wikipedia). Now, onto the typefaces!

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Rockwell was designed by Monotype in 1934. I first saw (or at least first noticed) it several years ago somewhere on Joe Clark’s website](http://joeclark.org) and immediately took note of it. Rockwell strikes me as less formal than a lot of other slab serifs, perhaps because of the plump little bulges on characters like the lower n, m, k, and a. For some reason, I particularly love Rockwell’s lowercase a:

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Archer is a another beautiful, elegant typeface by Hoefler & Frere-Jones. It was commissioned by Martha Stewart Living magazine. Rather than try to describe this font myself, I’ll quote what the designers themselves say:

Archer would have to answer some formidable typographic demands, since Living is an almanac of lists, recipes, charts, diagrams, tables, calendars, and glossaries … We restored the vanished ‘ball terminals’ to the lowercase, and uncharacteristically applied these gestures to the capitals as well, in order to yield a font that’s friendly without being silly, and attractive without being flashy. The result is a typeface that’s well-mannered, easy to work with, and inviting to read.

You can see a slightly-modified version of Archer in the new LiFT logo.

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Clarendon is a classic slab serif originally designed in 1845 by Robert Besley from the Fann Street Foundry. It’s been revamped by a few foundries, most notably Linotype (Clarendon LT) and Bitstream (Clarendon BT). The original version was also only available in a single, heavy weight. A lot of variations have been added over the years, making this a very versatile typeface. I personally like the digits and its use in small-capped headlines. If you are a Starbucks fan, you’ve probably noticed this font many times – they use Clarendon a lot.

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Museo is a fairly new and decidedly gorgeous semi-slab serif by Jos Buivenga from the exljbris font foundry. It’s a very unique typeface with a mixture of straight lines, subtly blunt corners – and it looks great all weights. But do you know what I especially love about Museo? You can download 3 weights for free! Jos Buivenga has actually made several beautiful free typefaces, including Diavlo, Delicious, Fertigo and Anivers.

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At first glance, ITC Lubalin Graph looks remarkably similar to Rockwell – bunches of circles and sticks. However, if you look closely you’ll notice that Lubalin Graph adheres more strictly to circular curves and rigid strokes, while Rockwell’s curves are a bit more bulbous and the strokes less geometrically exact. A good example of this is the lowercase ‘a’:

Lubalin Graph font is used a lot by Home Hardware, which is where it first caught my eye (though I didn’t actually identify the typeface until recently). I have especially noticed this font (or something similar) being used a lot lately.

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Get ‘em while they’re hot!

If you haven’t already got these slab serifs in your type arsenal, go get them. If you can afford them, that is: with the exception of Museo, these fonts are not cheap:

• Rockwell ($179 for nine variants)
• Archer ($199 for basic 10 variants)
• Clarendon ($194 for five variants)
• Museo ($33 for all weights)
• ITC Lubalin Graph ($99 for four variants)

Of course, if you’re lucky enough to work at a great little design shop like me, it’s not really an issue :) Anyway, what are your favorite slab serifs?