While reading an article on the design process for FF Meta Serif, I came across this passage which struck me as particularly hilarious. If you can understand this, you probably know too much about typography for your own good.

Kris was more inclined to turn Meta Serif into a slab – a pretty literal take – basically Meta with ever so slightly trapezoidal serifs tacked on. Christian’s sketch took it firmly into Antiqua territory (‘Antiqua’ being the common German name for serif faces, as opposed to ‘Grotesk’ which means sans serif) by increasing the contrast and adding bracketed serifs. Christian tried to keep as many of the salient features intact as he could, yet his design was definite departure from Meta. The slab was closer to what Erik and Christian had discussed in the past, but Christian’s grand plan (and the underlying reason why he thought Meta Serif should be an Antiqua) was to draw Unit Slab as well, and let that one be a real Egyptian. That way they would end up with a serif and slab that could be used together and be compatible with both FF Meta and FF Unit.