Every design trend piece in 2025 declared serifs "back." Luxury brands swapped their sans-serifs for high-contrast Roman typefaces, and suddenly every branding studio was pitching serif-forward identities to their clients. But the narrative of a serif renaissance overstates what is actually happening.

What we are seeing is not a broad typographic shift — it is a correction in one specific segment. Luxury and fashion brands that abandoned their heritage serifs during the Helvetica-ification of the 2010s are returning to type styles that signal craft and permanence. Burberry, Saint Laurent, and Balmain all went sans; some are coming back. That is not a trend. That is brands realizing they made the same mistake and fixing it.

Outside of luxury, sans-serifs still dominate — and for good reason. They perform better at small sizes on screens, they scale more predictably across responsive layouts, and they carry fewer cultural assumptions. For tech brands, DTC brands, and anything targeting a younger demographic, a serif wordmark still reads as "traditional" more often than "premium."

The real typographic trend worth watching is not serif versus sans — it is the rise of custom and modified typefaces. Brands like Spotify, Airbnb, and Apple have shown that owning your own typeface creates a layer of distinctiveness that no off-the-shelf font can match. That is where the smart money is going, regardless of whether it has serifs or not.