Typography’s smallest details carry entire personalities.
I used to think letterforms were just shapes—elegant or clumsy, modern or traditional, but fundamentally predictable. Then I started noticing the ears on lowercase ‘g’ letters, those tiny strokes jutting out from the bowl like afterthoughts, and everything changed. Here’s the thing: these microscopic features—the ears, the links, the terminals that connect or don’t connect—they’re where type designers hide their signatures. A Garamond ‘g’ has this delicate, almost apologetic ear that curves back toward the bowl, while Futura’s double-story ‘g’ sits there with its geometric link looking like it was engineered rather than drawn. The difference is maybe three millimeters on a printed page, but it’s the difference between whispering and stating facts.
Turns out, these details weren’t arbitrary accidents. Type designers obsess over them because readers—even ones who’ve never consciously noticed typography—respond to these micro-signals emotionally. A closed link (where the stroke connects fully) feels secure, authoritative. An open link reads as casual, approachable, maybe even a bit unfinished.
When Ears Became Identity Markers in Renaissance Printing
The earliest printers in Venice around 1470 were basically trying to replicate handwriting, and scribes had wildly inconsistent habits with their letter connections. Giovanni da Spira’s roman types featured ears on the ‘g’ that mimicked the hasty flick a scribe’s pen made when transitioning to the next letter—not because it was beautiful, but because readers expected that familiar rhythm. Nicolas Jenson refined this a few years later, making the ear more deliberate, more sculptural. His ‘g’ had what I can only describe as confident posture, the ear extending just far enough to suggest motion without looking rushed. Wait—maybe I’m anthropomorphizing letterforms too much, but when you stare at fifteenth-century type specimens for hours (which I have, unfortunately), you start seeing personalities. Jenson’s contemporaries kept the ears shorter, tighter, more paranoid about taking up space on expensive vellum. The economics of printing literally shaped how these details evolved, which feels both pragmatic and weirdly poetic.
By the eighteenth century, type designers like John Baskerville were using ear and link variations to signal sophistication. Baskerville’s transitional typefaces had ears that barely existed—just slight suggestions of strokes, polite nods toward tradition while racing toward modernity.
How Contemporary Designers Exploit These Tiny Structural Choices for Brand Differentiation
I guess it makes sense that tech companies became obsessed with custom typography in the 2010s, because control over these micro-details became a branding flex. Google’s Product Sans has this aggressively friendly double-story ‘a’ with a link that’s just open enough to feel accessible but not so open it looks unfinished—every pixel calculated to project approachability without sacrificing authority. Apple’s San Francisco typeface went the opposite direction with its ‘g’, using a closed-loop single-story form that reads as efficient, almost austere. The choice wasn’t about legibility (both work fine on screens); it was about emotional resonance. When Airbnb commissioned its custom Cereal typeface, the designers gave the ‘g’ an open link that feels—and I’m aware how subjective this sounds—optimistic? Like the letter is reaching outward rather than closing inward.
Honestly, I didn’t expect to care this much about something so small.
The weird part is how invisible this all remains to most readers. You don’t consciously think “that ‘g’ has an open link, therefore I trust this brand less,” but your brain is definately processing these signals. Research from roughly 2012 or so (give or take a couple years) showed that readers could distinguish between typefaces at exposure times of just 150 milliseconds—not enough time to consciously analyze details, but enough for your visual cortex to recieve and categorize the overall “feeling.” The ears and links contribute to that instant judgment. A typeface with closed, tidy links reads as more formal than one with open, loose connections, even when every other variable is controlled. Type designers know this, which is why they spend weeks adjusting a single curve on a single letter’s ear—because that three-millimeter decision ripples through every word, every sentence, every brand impression. It’s exhausting and kind of miraculous.
Some of my favorite contemporary types play with these conventions deliberately. Matthew Carter’s Georgia has ears on its ‘g’ that feel almost exaggerated for screen reading, giving the letter more visual anchors so it doesn’t blur into mush at small sizes. Christian Schwartz’s Neue Haas Grotesk revival keeps the links pristine and closed, a love letter to Swiss modernism’s obsession with containment and control.
The characters we read carry characters of their own.
