The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog
Clarendon vs Trade Gothic
Two nineteenth-and-twentieth-century workhorses that still define their genres. Clarendon is the original bracketed slab serif, cut at London's Fann Street Foundry in 1845 and revived by Hermann Eidenbenz for Haas in 1953, while Trade Gothic is Jackson Burke's no-nonsense American grotesque, built for Linotype in stages between 1948 and 1960. One is a sturdy, warm serif with a Wild West and signage pedigree; the other is a tight, airy sans made for headlines and advertising.
Clarendon is a commercial font, so it is shown here in Roboto Slab, its closest free alternative. All free alternatives to Clarendon → Trade Gothic is a commercial font, so it is shown here in Archivo Narrow, its closest free alternative. All free alternatives to Trade Gothic →
The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog
- Clarendon is a slab serif with heavy bracketed serifs, low stroke contrast, a large x-height and ball terminals on letters like a and c, which gives it a solid, friendly, almost typewriter-like presence at display sizes.
- Trade Gothic is a grotesque sans descended from Akzidenz-Grotesk, more irregular than Helvetica or Univers, with blunter terminals and proportions that shift noticeably between its weights and widths because the family grew over twelve years.
- Trade Gothic's strength is range: three weights across condensed, regular and extended widths, with the condensed cuts a newspaper-headline staple, whereas Linotype's Clarendon ships in just Light, Roman and Bold.
- Linotype's 2009 Trade Gothic Next, by Akira Kobayashi and Tom Grace, cleaned up the original's spacing and kerning inconsistencies and is the version usually recommended for web use.
- Both are commercial fonts sold through Monotype, so desktop and web licensing costs apply to either choice, though Clarendon has free open-source descendants such as Besley and Montagu Slab.
Clarendon
Reach for Clarendon when you want warmth and heritage with real punch, such as posters, packaging, signage, wayfinding and brand marks that should feel established and approachable.
Trade Gothic
Reach for Trade Gothic when you need a direct, utilitarian sans for headlines, editorial hierarchies, retail and advertising messaging, especially where the condensed widths let you fit more words per line.