Franklin Gothic

&

Futura

Franklin Gothic

PaulRenner

MorrisFullerBenton

Designer Paul Renner created the typeface Futura in 1927. Futura is a nice geometric sans-serif font, which unlike typical sans-serif fonts used in the display world, featured a low X-height. Renner wanted to stay away from any decoration when de-signing the font, leaving it with just a crisp and clean typeface. Futura also included some features such as small capitals and old style figures. Renner is a German citizen, so Futura was designed in Germany. Since it’s re-lease, Futura has become one of the most popular fonts, and a common-ly used one for headlines, posters, banners, etc. There have been a few versions that have stemmed off of it’s creation and popularity, including Futura Black, Futura Display, Futu-ra Condensed, and Steile Futura, all

designed by Renner. Futura has con-tinued to thrive even to this day with the help of it’s nice and clean design, and is a staple in the typographic world. Young, thriving designers look to typefaces such as Futura as inspi-ration in the use their own work.

Futura 1927

Franklin Gothic is a grotesque, sans-serif font, designed by Ameri-can designer Morris Fuller Benton in 1902. Since he was American, nat-urally Franklin Gothic was created in the United States. The typeface is bolder than a regular font and named after Benjamin Franklin. Some oddi-ties are that despite it being sans-ser-if, Franklin Gothic still stands by more traditional features such as a double story “a” and “g”. Benton wanted to create a clean and crisp typeface that took ideas from earlier models from the 1800’s. Over a span of ten years, different faces and sizes of the typeface were introduced, in-cluding condensed, extra condensed, italic and condensed shaded. Frank-lin Gothic is very popular and is used frequently in various types of media

over the years. Franklin Gothic is the most popular of the gothic series that Benton designed throughout his career. Due to it’s fame, this typeface is frequently talked about in high regards in classrooms and schools where typography history is taught.

Franklin Gothic 1902

Paul RennerPaul Renner was born in 1878 in Wernigerode, Germany. He was not a big fan of modern arts at the time like jazz and cinema, but he liked how much modernist focused on function and making thing easier to do. These traits really stick Renner in the middle between a traditionalist, and a modernist, which is what he attempted with his typefaces, mixing Gothic and Roman. This can be seen in Futura. During his time living, Renner created multiple typefaces, many based around his most famous and popular font, Futura. When he was not designing typefaces, Renner spent his time writing typography books, his most famous being (in their English translation) The Art of Typography, and Typography as Art. His life revolved around his typography.

1927

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Typefaces by Renner

Architype Renner

Futura

Plak

Futura Black

Futura Light

Ballade

Renner Antiqua

Morris Fuller BentonMorris Fuller Benton was born in 1872 in America. His father, Linn Boyd Benton, was a very skilled type-face designer before him, and Full-er Benton was able to pick up the designer qualities from his father and apply them later in life. Unlike some of his successors, Fuller Benton mas-tered and embraced the new tech-nology and thoroughly used them in his designs. He designed numerous typefaces, with his most famous be-ing the Gothic series, headlined by Franklin Gothic. When it was all said and done, Fuller Benton had com-pleted 221 typefaces. He was an im-portant member of American Type Founders, and was Chief Type De-signer for 37 years starting in 1900. His Gothic series became very fa-mous and highly regarded over time.

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1902

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Gothic Typefaces by Benton

Globe Gothic

Franklin Gothic

Alternate Gothic

Monotone Gothic

News Gothic

Clearface Gothic

Bank Gothic

Advertising in today’s world is huge. It is almost impossible to avoid see-ing an advertisement on a day-to-day basis. Ads are something that have become a huge part of our culture, and are being forced into our life every day. One of the biggest and most important factors in advertis-ing is what font is used. Choosing the right font is everything. The font chosen must represent the type of product or service being offered. For example you would not use a child-ish font if you were designing a logo or advertising for a law firm. Futura was revolutionary in the advertising world. It was not a usual sight at the time to see a sans-serif font used in a headline. Volkswagen challenged that notion in the 60’s with their ad, Lem-on, which became a huge success

and forever changed the advertising game with the use of Futura. All it took was a single word consisting of five letters and a period, and Futura would solidify it’s spot in history..

Advertising

Advertising (cont.)While Futura was making headlines, literally, with Volkswagen, Franklin Gothic was making it’s own. One of the most popular magazines in the country, Time Magazine, adopt-

ed Franklin Gothic and became very successful as the font for all head-lines, inside and out, and trusted it to be the font that caught the users eye. It was the success of the font choice that has helped the magazine stay up there as one of the most popular magazines for over 90 years. Frank-lin Gothic has continued it’s in run in advertising as the main font for countless other brands. Some other places where Franklin Gothic is used include Bank of America’s Logo, cover art for Van Morrison’s Brown Eyed Girl, the main font for the film poster of Rockey, and countless other places. Futura has also had a lot of success in the advertising world by being used as the main font for a few television shows such as Sesame Street, Lost, Doug, and Warehouse 13.

Burke, Christopher.Paul Renner: the art oftypography. London:Hyphen Press, 1998.

Jaspert, Berry and Johnson. Encyclopaedia ofTypefaces. Cassell Paperback, London; 2001

Works Cited

This Land is My Land. Time Magazine Articles. N.p., n.d. Web. <http://www.personal.psu.edu/cbp5032/blogs/pritts_art_203/ed_article_time-magazine.jpg>.

“Lemon.” Flickr. N.p., n.d. Web. <https://www.flickr.com/photos/alan-pf/5806353556/>.

Anthony Guagliardo

GDES 2345

“Franklin Gothic.” Wikipedia. N.p., n.d.Web. <http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/35/FranklinGothicSP.svg>.

“Futura.” Wikipedia. N.p., n.d. Web.<http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/50/Futura_Specimen.svg>.