Instead of hiring a design firm to give the Chronicle its new look, deputy managing editor Nanette Bisher told the Society of Newspaper Design it was an in-house group effort.

But the masthead was restored by Jim Parkinson of Typedesign.com, who investigated the history of the Chronicle logo. His summary of the masthead’s history is available as a PDF on the SND Web site.

The three fonts the Chronicle is using — Archer, Farnham and Antenna — are popping up in a lot of newspapers these days. Bisher said she saw a lot of papers at the SND conference using them.

“While we tested many fonts, we came back to this set as feeling right. I believed these fonts had just the right style to match the eclectic sensibility of San Francisco and the Bay Area,” Bisher said.