The capital, sans-serif R.
Here’s a bunch of sans-serif fonts. Observe that the leg of the R attaches to the body at differing points. In San Francisco Display (the typeface designed by Apple and used as the system font in OS X and iOS), the leg attaches right at the start of the curve of the bowl (the enclosed space inside the R). In Avenir, the leg’s attachment point moves further left, attaching at the bottom straight edge of the bowl. In Century Gothic, the leftward movement continues, and in Futura, it’s almost at the stem, the straight horizontal stroke of the R. In Programme Alt (the font of Rap Genius), the leg cuts into the bowl and attaches directly to the stem.
Sans-serif typefaces, like serif typefaces, also have R legs that are not straight. Helvetica has a really weirdly-shaped leg that seems thicker at the end and sorta has a petif serif. I don’t like it. It seems very out of place in an otherwise clean-looking typeface. Arial, Microsoft’s Helvetica clone, has a better looking leg (still not a big fan of it) with some curvature and variation in stroke thickness. Myriad Pro has a curved leg that I really like, with minimal variation in thickness and gentle angles. Eurostile, a geometric sans-serif, has a leg that curves 90 degrees and goes straight down. It can be constructed from a B, as below, by first elongating it and then cropping it off at the baseline and tweaking the stroke curvature.
And… that’s it for this type tour. See you on the next one!
