The Go sans-serif font family is “humanist” rather than “grotesque” in style.
The shapes of modern grotesque fonts like Helvetica are sculpted, with smooth,
assimilated forms. Humanist sans-serifs are derived from Humanist handwriting
and early fonts of the Italian Renaissance and still show subtle traces of
pen-written calligraphy. There is some evidence that humanist fonts are more
legible than grotesque fonts.
Texts set in Go occupy nearly the same space as texts in Helvetica or Arial,
but Go has a different look and texture because of its humanist style. Some Go
letters with DIN 1450 legibility features are wider than corresponding letters
in Helvetica or Arial, so some texts set in Go may take slightly more space.
This variant of the Go font family provides small capitals, since they are not
exposed via standard OpenType features in the main font family.
