… serifs are by no means superfluous and I like designing roman faces! Particularly for body text where serifs are a reading aid. There are two kinds of reading: text, and looking something up. Reading text is much easier with serifs. They are better at holding the words together.

But my main life’s work was designing sans serif typefaces. It is much more difficult to draw a grotesque than a roman face—much can be covered up with serifs in the latter. The grotesque is like the body of a fish, it is so smooth that no mistake can be allowed to happen!

Adrian Frutiger.