Portrait of a Font: Gotham
Unlike its British font forebears, Gotham is an entirely American-invention, brought to you by the same high-standard journalists who created GQ magazine. That’s right, the magazine with overtly attractive, yet classy, women, but also well dressed, occasionally shirtless, men might have you asking why a Gentleman’s Quarterly would want you to purchase a magazine with a shirtless man on the front. In all seriousness, GQ is a class act compared to its competition and they’re directly responsible for creating one of the most widely used fonts of our time.
You’ve seen Gotham everywhere, and you know you love it. It’s sleek, simple, and inspired by American ingenuity. When it was commissioned in 2000,Gotham’s designer Tobias Frere-Jones walked the streets of New York where a simple font had adorned every storefront since before the Second World War. Back then, New York was in a growth spurt: we’d just defeated the Central Powers, and nothing gets people expanding like a good victory. Glamour came back into our lives with neon-lit signs and sparkling marquees. A Sans-Serif font emerged, and as much as we all enjoy the royal feel of a good Serif, we wanted things faster, quicker, and with less nonsense. There wasn’t any room for feet on neon signs, the front of a skyscraper, or adorning the façade of New York’s famous Port Authority Bus terminal, which is exactly where Frere-Jones pulled inspiration from. On Eighth avenue, just a block away from Times Square, rests the city’s dirtiest, possibly most dangerous, and definitely most useful port. Travelers arrive from all directions and it’s this font that first greets them, directing them to where they need to go and how much it costs to be there. For decades, visitors have been ushered into New York City by the father of Gotham, and it is within those million subconscious minds that Gotham remains as a nostalgic callback to that one summer you visited New York City and almost got hit by a bicyclist but were saved at the last minute by a gorgeous woman who introduced you to a charming man who awarded you with an amazing job. Â
Here at Creative Soldier we pride ourselves on a knowledge of font and typefaces. We give ourselves tests every day to see if we can guess which font is which—and we can tell you that Gotham is EVERYWHERE.
The font has more uses than we care to mention, but perhaps its biggest claim to fame is in recent politics. The powers that be rely on this font’s ability to reach you at your core and pull from what’s most basic in you; meeting you on a level you’re familiar with. I doubt anyone from the New South Wales is reading this, but that entire nation’s logo relies on Gotham. And there are few closer to home uses too.
President Obama ran a campaign based on hope and change, and it’s no accident that he called upon Gotham to remind us of a hardworking America, even adding feet to its letters to to add some royalty back into the sentiment. For his 2012 campaign, the adjusted font was widely used and well received, though to this day, it’s sadly unavailable for personal download and use.
So next time you feel comforted by a word, or inspired to keep working because of that word, take a moment to recognize if it’s been written in Gotham or not. Chances are it is.