So Font of You

Nerding out over letters with Cody & Jess & Taylor

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Making the Best of It

Parsons is not going to buy us new typefaces, so here’s how to make due with the Adobe Type Library

Once upon a time, we had a professor who told us to always use a typeface made in the last 10 years. Our first thought? “Lol. No.” Why? Because we are poor and typefaces are expensive. (#studentlyfe) Plus, the type resources we have access to as Parsons students is sad—really sad.

We at Parsons the New School for Design, like you and every decent design studio on the planet, have access to the Adobe Type Library, which is hidden on our lab computers in Universal Type Client. (If you go to another school please feel free to comment regarding your type situation!) By the website alone, you can see what kind of dire situation we find ourselves in (read: nothing designed in the last 25 years, let alone the last 10.)

Most of the typefaces in the collection are Classics with a capital ‘C.’ Which means that most of these typefaces were originally designed for metal, then redrawn for phototype and then digitized for the screen. Sometimes this comes out okay—other times it is a clusterfuck (the kerning situation is bad).

When you are a design student, it can be tempting to illegally download some of the industry’s hottest faces. BUT COME ON GUYS—we all dream of the day we actually get paid for our design work. When that day comes, we are all going to want people to fork over the ca$h. Steal now? Karma later.

So, everyone has the Adobe Type Library (henceforth known as The Library), making it the meat and potatoes of design, so you best know how to use it. And we are here to help you cope. The following are the typefaces worth your time in the The Library and some alternate (read: “free”) resources.

Serif Town

1. Arno (aka the homie)

Arno is gonna get you through the hard times. For one, its quite the workhorse. Arno is truly flushed with 32 weights. We like using it for cookbooks (lots of fractions), but given all of its weights and styles, you can make it work for anything (though that doesn’t mean you should). Arno Pro’s a great place to start your typesetting career because it’s literally idiot-proof. The weights are named for fuction, Display, Subhead, Caption, etc. You literally cannot mess this one up.

2. Perpetua

Small x-height, delicate. Perfect for when you write too much for your class paper and you need to fit a lot more text on the page (not that that ever happens, right?). Actual useage? When your client gives you way too much text and not enough space to make it happen and you don’t want to resort to a Sans-Serif Condensed.

3. Garamond

At last count, a Parsons student has access to 7 different cuts of Garamond. Adobe Garamond Pro and Premier Pro are both Adobe cuts, they’re similar in look, but you’re going to want to stick to Premier Pro because it has a ton more weights and styles. Adobe’s cuts of Garamond are more similar to the free one that comes with your computer, so this’ll probably be your favorite until you take a look at Stempel’s. Stempel Garamond, while lacking in weights, is cut closest to the metal version; use it when you want to evoke a very classic feel. The last Garamond worth taking a look at is ITC’s cut. ITC Garamond is great for Display purposes. It’s got a really tall X-height and interesting weights like Bold Condensed that are impossible to read when you’ve typed more then 9 words.

4. Caslon

Caslon’s gonna give you almost the same amount of options as Garamond, and the rules are the same—Adobe’s cut is your go to, and use ITC for Display.

5. Jenson

One of the oldest in the collection, Jenson will add a bit of flair to anything you want to give a classic edge. It’s got deep calligraphic roots. Just look at the lowercase e, and you’ll fall in love.

6. Baskerville

We’ve mostly just got ITC’s, but surprisingly, this cut of Baskerville isn’t as display oriented as the other ITC faces. Baskerville is a high-contrast Transitional typeface, and people hated it when it first came out, because they thought it was difficult to read. That sentiment still holds a little true, so be careful in large blocks of text. Baskerville should almost be treated like a Didot. Gorgeous in small amounts.

Slab the bag

1/2. Serifa & Glypha

Both brainchilds of Adrian Frutiger, Serifa and Glypha are definitely your go-to slabs in The Library. Glypha’s taller than Serifa and it’s comes with more weights, but either one is great.

3. Joanna

Your most text-friendly slab serif. It looks a lot like it’s sister Perpetua (also designed by Eric Gill), just with a little bit of attitude, which comes mostly from its incredibly condensed italic. Funfact: Eric Gill designed Joanna for his daughter’s wedding invitations. A lot of other creepy stuff happened after that, but we will try and spare you.

Sassy Sans

1. Avenir

We will always hold a place in our hearts for sweet Avenir. We fell in love with Avenir when we desperately needed to get over our ex, Helvetica (#basic). Adrian Frutiger makes damn good typefaces and Avenir is no expection. The kicker? It was digitized pre-InDesign. So, you have to kern it properly. It needs TLC, people. Don’t neglect it.

2. Univers

Univers is kickass for info-graphics because it comes in literally every single weight and style from Thin Ultra Condensed through Extra Black Extended. Holla at yo boy, Frutiger. And it’s pronounced:

Enough said.

3. Grotesque MT Standard

The OG Helvetica. Also the better Helvetica in our opinion. Grotesque MT Standard isn’t exactly Akzidenz-Grotesk, but you’re a student, and you’re slumming it. So, use it, but don’t abuse it. And by that we mean KERN IT, GODDAMNIT.

4. Trade Gothic

Like Univers, Trade Gothic is amazeballs for infographics. Tall, slender & sexy, Trade Gothic is what you use when you are sick of Univers. Like Univers its got weights on weights. Fourteen to be exact. The kerning trick on this one? Watch out for the 1. This isn’t unique. In fact, a lot of number 1s are poorly kerned in typefaces so you should always keep a lookout.

5. Franklin Gothic

A humanist sans, Franklin gothic separates itself a bit from Trade and Univers. Franklin is sassy for a sans. His Q has a long tail and his lowercase g has a pretty sweet ear on it.

6. DIN 1451

DIN stands for Deutsche Industrie Normug, aka the German standard. In 1936 DIN 1451 was used for everything German, but mostly traffic signs. Similar to Gill Sans (see below), using DIN sometimes means that your design will be dubbed ‘German.’

7. Frutiger

Again, Adrian Frutiger k i l l s it.

8. Gill Sans

For British things only. You better also have tracked out bold type and small red letters. Pretend that Gill Sans Ultra Bold does not exist. Because it doesn’t. You could maaaybe get away with it designing a Sgt. Peppers by The Beatles Poster (both ridiculous and British), but that is the only way.

Dismal Displays

1. Fette Fraktur

For the numbers and the numbers only. Blackletters are illegible; the Germans are weird.

2. Didot & Bodoni

(Honestly though, maybe not. Bodoni / Didot is the Helvetica of serif typefaces. Overused and so #basic.)

3. Letter it yourself.

It’s display type, so you’re doing maybe 9 words tops, right? Man up; letter it yourself.

A word on kerning:

If you’re working on InDesign with any of these typefaces, which were likely digitized pre-90s, you’re going to want to use Optical Kerning.

Opitcal kerning is like the typeface writing a letter: Dear InDesign, HALP. I was digitized before sophisticated kerning systems, so you just take the reins on this one and make me look good.

You use Metrics to do exactly what the type designer said to do. Use this when your type designer is good (you paid a lot of money for your font or you go it from one of the places listed below).

Outside the Adobe Type Library.

There is life beyond the Adobe Type Library, believe it or not. Type collectives, open source typefaces and generous foundries are switching up the free font game.

The League of Moveable Type

Favorites: League Gothic, League Spartan, Raleway & Chunk

Google Fonts

Please, seriously. Use at your own risk. Favorites: Source Sans, Raleway, Roboto, Open Sans & Playfair Display

Beautiful Web Type showcases Google fonts at their sexiest. Thank youColin M. Ford and Juliette!

Also, see Aesop Fables with Google fonts.

Lost Type Co-op

Favorites: Mission Gothic, Dude, Mission Script, Lavanderia, Wisdom Script, & Pompadour Numerals.

The Free tag on MyFonts

Explore. Beware.

Punch

How fun (Inglorious bastards voice). But for real, this thing is a blast.

Open Source

Titillium & Cooper Hewitt (Coop is mac proprietary—only some weights available for PC—lame but more of a reason to switch over to the dark side)

How could we forget to mentionTypekit?

Well, we did. Whoops. Perhaps it is because Typekit is so easy that we forgot it was even a thing. Its seamless. Also, its (kinda) free. Mic drop.

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Throwback to the chat with Stranger & Stranger at Type Directors Club last week. #typography #lettering

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Writing Must Fit

  Scrhift Muss Passen by L. Nettlehorst

Schrift Muss Passen was published in 1959 for Essen, a business and advertising publishing company. The name translates roughly to Writing Must Fit Font Choice; it’s so much nicer in German, isn’t it? (How often can you even say that, anyway?) The book appears within a larger work calledWritten Expression in Advertising; Manual for the Artwork of Advertising Materials, a book that focuses on the proper use of typography in advertising materials. Like every other scholarly text we’ve toured during Type Class Tuesdays, it also includes a thorough classification system.

Schrift Muss Passen offers the first system in which the Lineal category has been sub-classified, though part of that credit is due to Maximilien Vox, who was working on a revised version of his 1954 system (in conjunction with ATypI—tune in next week) that included four subcategories for the Lineals. Schrift Muss Passen has two subclasses: Grotesk and Humanist. It’s simple and a good start, but it would be difficult to force a geometric sans serif face, like Futura or Gotham into either of those two categories, and since there is no catch-all (read: Display) section in this system, there would be no place for these faces to go (sad face).

Nettlehorst’s classification of Blackletter is typical, though missing a Rotunda category. Considering this classification was written in German (so excuse us if our translations are a wee-bit off), it’s a smidge bizarre that the Blackletter is not appropriately fawned over.

The breakdown of Serifs, which Nettlehorst calls Roman is interesting. This is certainly not the first system to classify the serif by period, but it is the first to do it so succinctly. Ultimately, Vox’s choices become more standard, with terms like Venetian and Transitional, but at this point, prior to the publication of the Vox/ATypI collaboration, those terms had not yet caught on. 

At this time, scholars hadn’t yet figured out what to do with the emerging Slab Serif category. Nettlehorst places it under Lineals, a term Vox used to describe Sans-Serifs, which makes sense given that Nettlehorst calls does not classify his serifs by their terminals, but by their historic period (Roman). Slab Serifs are certainly much more Lineal than they are Roman, after all.

Ultimately, it’s a good stab, but Schrift Muss Passen is not where we end this journey. Not by a long shot.

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Our Father, Who Art In Typeface Classification

The Vox System is the closest we’ll ever get to Classification Nirvana.

His classification isn’t the first, but French Critic, Maximilien Vox’s Vox System, introduced in 1954, is certainly one of the most lauded. Google ‘typeface classification system’ and Vox is going to be in your first five hits. Vox was an art theorist and historian of French typography. And according to our research; he is king, he is the master. He is, for our intents and purposes, not perfect, but the father of modern type classification.

His systems consists of ten main categories, our second single-level classification. He uses a lot of the established terminology, as well as inventing some of his own vocabulary.

As is in vogue, Vox classifies the serif typefaces based upon their historical period, from the Venetian humanist letter to the modern Didone. The remainder of typefaces, by comparison, are named by the visual appearance of the letter.

Maximilien Vox, ever the perfectionist, revised his system several times, resulting in certain inconsistencies. Some scholars report that the Vox System sub-classifies the Lineals (Sans-Serifs) into Grotesque, Neo-Grotesque, Geometric and Humanist, but we maintain that this addition was made in one of the later revisions, likely the 1961 Vox-ATypI System.

To classify the Serif typefaces, Maximilien Vox gets a little creative with his frankenwords (or portmanteau for the upper class among us). He invented the term Geralde, a nod to Claude Garamond and Aldus Manutius (the elder), two prolific printers who practiced in the fifteenth centuries, who made type in the French style (more contrast between the thicks and thins, and more delicate proportions than Venetian type).

This term is far more specific than the much-used and general Old Style, but in it’s newness, it was criticized for being unrecognizable (this was before Obama, back when we were still afraid of Change). Those critics had a point, but ultimately they were wrong (just like the Tea Partiers), as Geralde has outlasted the Vox System, and been used in many typeface classification systems since.

Vox did a similar thing with his term Didone (for the Modern serifs), combining the surnames for Firmin Didot and Giambattista Bodoni, still the most popular and oft-copied Modern types to this day.

Lineal, Vox’s term for Sans-Serifs, hardly carried the criticism that his portmanteau did, which is perplexing to say the least. Lineal carries the false assumption that sans serif typefaces are inherently (and all) monoline. The term remained popular for several decades before it was replaced by sans serif around the 1980s.

The Vox System undergoes a massive revision in the early 60s, with the help of ATypI (tune in next week), which goes on to be the most trusted name in typeface classification systems. But we first wanted to offer you a peak behind the curtain, to the humble beginnings of our father, Maximilien Vox.

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Daniel Berkeley Updike

This kid wasn’t messing around when it came to typeface classification.

Daniel Berkeley Updike was an American printer and typographic historian. In 1893, he founded the Merrymount Press in Providence, Rhode Island with the express purpose of doing “common work well.” Could you imagine? There used to be a time when hand-set printing was common. We were all born in the wrong era. Ultimately, his excellence in printing inspired other printers. He taught the first college course in the United States on this history of typography, and the practice of printing at Harvard University. 

In 1922, he published his sweeping scholarly achievement: Printing Types: Their History, Forms, and Use in 1922 which covers typography from before the golden age of printing, well through to the opening of the twentieth century.

In Printing Types, Updike discusses 15th century printing types in Europe with astounding depth, far more depth, in fact than could be captured within our pie chart system. Shown above is the paired down version of his typeface classification system. To see the detailed version, one would have to imagine six of these charts—one each for Germany, Italy, France, The Netherlands, Spain and England).

There would then be some differentiations in those charts. Only the Italian chart would have the Italic, which it would use over the Vernacular classification. Germany’s Gothic types would be called Textura, Fraktura and Schwabacher (say that 5 times fast).

England would remove the Classical Roman classification and Spain would lose the vernacular category. It would also have a Woodcut Capitals classification, which brings up a whole other mess–should there also be printing based classification? (Probably) And how would that work? (Ugh, we’ll save that for another post.)

In addition to detailing the most in-depth classification system, Updike discusses nearly all of the known printers of each country, which typefaces they used, and their contributions to the art of letterpress printing. Can you say workaholic? We’re glad though. He’s pretty much the 1920s James Bond of typefaces­–attempting to crack all the typographic mysteries with his never-ending knowledge. He kind of reminds us of Paul Shaw, one of our favorite professors who happens to be an extremely knowledgeable historian and talented calligrapher.

Anywhooo, back to Updike…There are several specimens of each type, and a thorough analysis for each image, making it the masterwork of pre-digital age printing and typography.

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Fancy & French

Parisian Typesetter Francis Thibaudeau was determined to create the first rational system for categorizing type. He worked as a French typographer who designed type catalogues for Renault and Marcou and later Debergny and Peignot. 

Because of the density and disorganization of the type libraries for these foundries, Thibaudeau was determined to create a new system for typeface classification. He presents his conclusions across two books: Letter Printing (1921) and then a revised version in French modern typography Manual (1924). 

Originally, his system only had four main categories: Roman (Elzévirs), Didot, Egyptian (L’Egyptienne) and Antique. We have two problems with the original system: the peculiar choice to use Antique to describe sans-serif faces, which were being popularized in Greece at this time, and being French, Thibaudeau chooses to name his Modern category for the French Modern type drawn in the 19th century by printer Firmin Didot. This is a tradition that continues into the next half-century when the Vox System is released in 1954 before it reverts to Modern with the 1961 ATypI revision. 

In his second book, Thibaudeau adds Scripts (Écritures) and Display (Fantaisies) to over the typefaces being used in early 20th century advertising (#tgod). 

Of the systems of his time, the Thibaudeau Classification was the simplest, which we totally value. But he could have gone deeper. We want to go deeper; that’s always been the goal. 

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The Practice of Typography

Kicking off Type Class(ification) Tuesday with Theodore Low De Vinne’s  pioneering 1899 system

Theodore Low De Vinne was an American typographer and printer practicing in the late nineteenth century—the golden age of typography, seriously, because never again will a typeface ever be immortalized in lead. He began his career in 1849 at the print shop of Francis Hart. When Hart died in 1877, De Vinne took over the business, and it operated as Theodore L. De Vinne & Co until 1908, when it was renamed the De Vinne Press. 

De Vinne is best known for his typeface Century Roman, which he co-designed with Linn Boyd Benton. De Vinne Press is also responsible for printing Century Magazine, and Century Dictionary, both considered some of the finest specimens of typographic art. 

In The Practice of Typography, De Vinne discusses the process of classifying types in 19th century specimen books. He wants to discuss all of the typefaces used by the printers of his time, but decides it’s “not practical” “within the limits prescribed for this volume” (De Vinne, 183). So instead, he discusses the popular typeface naming conventions of his day. Like the modern hashtagging system, each font was assigned a series of names. The first word refers to the body of the type (#Italian). If no other word is added, it is understood to be a Roman face (#nofilter). The second word describes the face, (#Italian #Antiqua). The third word refers to width of the font (#Italian #Antiqua #Condensed). The forth word is only used if the face is an ornamental, such as an outline typeface (#tagsforlikes). 

De Vinne details this entire system and concludes, “all ornamental types, and indeed many plain types, are named and classified in an unsatisfactory manner.” Duh. Well, to be fair, at De Vinne’s time, this was a deep thought. To us, modern type-users, who are still without a standardized system of typeface classification, it seems a bit obvious. Also, sorry that it’s been 165 years and we still don’t have our act together, Teddy. Our bad. 

De Vinne shares his own attempt at type classification. While useful in its simplicity, it’s far too old school for our purposes. For example, De Vinne does not include Clarendons (now known almost universally as Slab-Serifs) with the Roman typefaces. Instead, he lumps Clarendons in the Display category along with Fat Faces and Gothics (aka Sans-Serifs). 

In fact, it is not until the 1950s that Sans-Serif is broken out into it’s own category, when Association Typographique Internationale (ATypI) finally acknowledges that this new-fangled Sans-Serif thing is not just a fad (Helvetica, anyone?) and remodels the Maximillen Vox system. It is also around this time that Slab-Serif typefaces are classified under the Serif category (hello, serif is in the name, thank you), instead of being thrown in to the frustratingly ubiquitous Display/Other catch-all. 

And as frustrating as the Display/Other/IDownloadedThisFromDaFont category may be, it is used so often in classification systems because of its inherent convenience; allowing for relatively neat taxonomies like De Vinne’s. Becuase De Vinne makes use of the Display category in this way, his system is relatively simple, with under 15 subcategories. The tradeoff then becomes neatness of system vs. depth and breadth of system, a choice we will explore in detail as the series continues. 

You can purchase The Practice of Typography here.

And follow the rest of Type Class Tuesday here. 

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Type Class(ification) Tuesday

A Weekly Look Into (at Least) 25 (Maybe More Who Knows We’ll Get Bored Eventually) Systems of Typeface Classification 

This is a topic of conversation you’re only going to find vehemently discussed at places like TypeCon, and in the basement of Cooper Union on a Monday night while Indra Kupferschmid takes the stage. But if you’ve ever struggled to find the right typeface amid a library as depthless as MyFonts, or heavens forbid, DaFont, you know the pain of the modern designer: we have no universal system of typeface classification. 

Many attempts have been made standardize the classification of typography, but so far—165 years and counting—no taxonomy has been successful enough that everyone up and decides: Okay, Stop Now, ‘Cause We Got This. 

Join us every Tuesday for the foreseeable future as we analyze 25(+?) different typeface classification systems published in the last century and a half. Our picks range from typographic forefathers like Theodore Low De Vinne and Maximilien Vox and culminate with contemporary type superstars such as Ellen Lupton and Tobias Frere-Jones (there’s even a bonus appearance from much-beloved wackadoodle, Robert Bringhurst). 

We’ll take each system and place it into our patented pie chart format, completely ignoring any original visualization (or lack thereof) in the name of standardization. (See what we did there?) Our colors represent the three main branches of type design: Serif, Sans-Serif and Topical—a term we stole from William Bevington and Sue Chong, our champion hand-holders and mentors for this behemoth project—that replaces the insufferable “Display” category. (We’ve already given so much away). 

By examining a wide cross section of naming taxonomies, we will recognize the categorical names that have prevailed, shun those that have failed, and play God smiling down upon those that tickle our fancy. We will see the useful, and the daring, and we’ll show you their journey as they are either added or removed to the typographic lexicon. 

Furthermore, (because we are pie-chart-making-machines) every categorical name, from each system will be collected and then divided into a series of master diagrams that serve to enumerate the usage of each term over time. 

From these we will suggest a final, master classification, that we know—we just know—will swiftly replace all others as industry standard (or at the very least, be immortalized in some other designer’s paper in the next 100 years). 

See the full Type Class Tuesday series here.

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Not So Font Of You Anymore

Mourning the breakup of Typography's greatest partnership 

The news broke a few months ago. And it shocked the design world to the core. 

Jonathan Hoefler and Tobias Frere-Jones were not two separate entities. They were born six days apart in the very lucky month of August 1970. They were competitors and then they were business partners; one in the same. Each time one was interviewed or called for comment, the other butted in. They were the darlings of type design. Their work was prolific; their typefaces seen everywhere. Hoefler & Frere-Jones was so synonymous with its craft that when you Googled typography, their homepage was the first result after Wikipedia.

So it was unfathomable. Yet there it was. Black and white. Set 12 on 24 points in Arial like some sort of ironic punch-line: the terms of the lawsuit Tobias Frere-Jones had taken out against Jonathan Hoefler. 

…in the most profound treachery and sustained exploitation of friendship, trust and confidence, Hoefler accepted all of the benefits provided by Frere-Jones while repeatedly promising Frere-Jones that he would give him the agreed equity…

—Lawsuit, January 2013

Jonathan Hoefler began an apprenticeship at the ripe age of eighteen for the Roger Black Studio, where he spent a year building a name for himself while he conducted his studies. He designed the new masthead for Harper’s Bazaar just after he turned nineteen.

When his year with Roger Black ran out, he opened his own business, Hoefler Type Foundry, for which he registered the iconic domain name ‘typography.com’. It was 1994; the dot com race had barely begun. 

The business of type design is his language. 

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Tobias Frere-Jones, on the other hand, took a much more traditional approach to his artistic education. He earned his BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design, where, at the time, there was no formal type design curricula. Frere-Jones pursued independent study classes, seeking out the opinions of master typographers when his own skill set began to exceed that of his professors. It was through several conversations with Matthew Carter over his first commercially available typeface, that Frere-Jones landed his first job. The typeface, drawn for his brother’s band, was sold through Carter’s foundry, FontBureau prior to Frere-Jones’ graduation. Upon the completion of his degree, Frere-Jones was hired at FontBureau.

Since then, he has gone on to be one of the world’s leading and most recognized type designers. He has designed over 800 fonts, useable in 145 different languages. In 1996, he joined the faculty at the Yale School of Art and he frequently lectures on typeface design and typography at other academic institutions and graphic design organizations. His work is included in the permanent collections at the Victoria & Albert and the Museum of Modern Art. He is the first American to receive the prestigious Gerrit Noordzij Prize. 

Together in 2013, Frere-Jones and Hoefler received the AIGA medal—the graphic design profession’s highest honor. 

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When Hoefler and Frere-Jones met, the type design world was smaller, even more niche than it is now, fifteen years later. Both were avid collectors of antique type specimen books. When bookseller catalogs showed up in the mail, Tobias remarks, “I knew that I would have to drop everything right that second, because I knew that at that moment, Jonathan was looking through the same catalog” about to buy up all of the best of the specimens. 

After years of being the benchmark by which the other was judged—one would design type for Martha Stewart Living and so Better Homes and Gardens would call on the other—they “recognized in each other the capacity to be both one another’s best advocates and harshest critics” (Hoefler). 

And then in 1999, at the Gotham Bar & Grill on 12th Street, Hoefler extended an offer of partnership to Frere-Jones: move to New York and we will start Tobais and Jonathan’s Excellent Adventure LLC. For the subsequent decade and a half, they worked in tandem under the name Hoefler & Frere-Jones, their specimen books displayed proudly on the studio bookshelf, spine to spine, as one collection.

You know, we were always friends, even though we were technically competitors.

—Tobias Frere-Jones, April 2013

Shortly after the beginnings of their partnership, Frere-Jones, with the help of Hoefler, began a commission for GQ. The design brief was entirely aesthetic: a masculine and geometric sans-serif, that was new, fresh and versatile. Given the ambiguity, Frere-Jones decided to return to a project he began in the early 1990s, one he still wanted to explore further: working-class lettering. These kinds of letters fascinated Frere-Jones because they were not created by a designer, but an engineer. They were so basic, that a designer would turn up his nose at them.

Steel signage, on the corner of Tenth Avenue and Little West 12th Street.

The letters, though they appeared modernist, were inherently different from their German and Swiss counterparts, most notably the ubiquitous Helvetica. The earliest examples of this lettering date back to the Work Project Administration Posters of post-depression America. 

It is possible that these typefaces were inspired by the simplification of typographic standards that came out of Nazi Germany, which frowned upon extraneous decoration. This attitude was present in Germany’s contemporary architecture, the organization of that society itself, and it was definitely present in the popular typefaces, like Univers and Futura, that emerged during this period. New Deal America was trying for the same kind of graphic unification, leading to the development of what Frere-Jones has taken to calling the American sans-serif. 

Neon channel letters, on Eighth Avenue, west of Pennsylvania Station

Historically, lettering like this was created completely outside of the realm of type design. It was geometric and bold, and it looked like draftsman lettering. As a rule, signs that used it were devoid of stylistic embellishments and were based entirely on legibility and the ability to reproduce letters mechanically. The style was long treated for many years as a formula for signage lettering, and so it was popular in the urban landscape. The American sans-serif dominated cities until the late 1950s, when the typeface Helvetica was introduced. Quickly, the hand-rendered American sans was all but obsolete.

Obsolete, until Tobias Frere-Jones and Jonathan Hoefler stood under the sign over the entrance to the New York Port Authority Bus Terminal, admiring the lettering. 

Aluminum signage, the eighth avenue facade of New York’s Port Authority Bus Terminal.

From there, Frere-Jones and Hoefler combed the streets of New York City for the rest of the alphabet. The capitals were easy to build; both because those letterforms embodied the most basic forms of the alphabet and because the engineers who designed these signs worked exclusively in the upper case, as mixture of cases would only serve to clutter the signage. The numbers too, were readily accessible, while the lowercase was created almost completely from scratch.

Gotham, originally commissioned by GQ. 

The subsequent typeface Tobias Frere-Jones designed, is called Gotham. And it’s everywhere.

[Gotham] was born outside of type design, in some other world. And it has a very distinct flavor from that.  —Tobias Frere Jones, Helvetica, 2007 

While the partnership commenced in the last months of 1999, Hoefler Type Foundry didn’t officially change its name to Hoefler & Frere-Jones until 2003, when Frere-Jones fulfilled his end of the partnership bargain by acquiring the rights to the typefaces he designed while at FontBureau. 

Rather adorably, Hoefler and Frere-Jones dubbed this group of typefaces the Dowry Fonts, “because this was going to be like a marriage” (Frere-Jones). Included within the Dowry Fonts was Whitney. 

Whitney: clear for signage, compact for print. 

Whitney is a sans-serif face that is unique in its ability to read well at text sizes and also look sharp as headlines and in other display uses. 

In exchange for half of Jonathan’s shares in Hoefler Type Foundry and his name on the door, Tobias Frere-Jones signed over Whitney and the rest of Dowry Fonts to the new company for the nominal fee of $10. At the time of the deal, the retail value of these typefaces was just under $3 million. 

In 2003, they drafted a press release to announce the name change: “Jonathan Hoefler, Principal of The Hoefler Type Foundry, and Tobias Frere-Jones, Type Director of The Hoefler Type Foundry, announced today that they have entered into an agreement to become equal partners and to rename the business Hoefler & Frere-Jones Typography.” 

Tobias and Jonathan’s Excellent Adventure, LLC had officially begun. The pair of typographers agreed that Frere-Jones would operate as the principal designer while Hoefler used his client hustling skills to sell Tobias’ fonts.

“If you go back and look at the old logo, you can see the deal that we made. There are two names there—the same size, side by side, not one over the other.”  —Tobias Frere-Jones 

After Gotham finished its exclusivity contract with GQ, it enjoyed a kind of quiet success until it returned to the national stage. 

In 2007, a senator from Illinois was gearing up for his presidential campaign when his design team came across Gotham. It wasn’t tired. It had history, but nothing like the typefaces employed by his competition. Gotham was trustworthy, uniquely American, and bold. It was the Change they had been looking for. 

Campaign signage for Barack Obama’s 2008 Presidential Campaign, set in Gotham

That senator, of course, was Barack Obama. Many go so far to argue that Gotham, with its comfortable, vaguely familiar and undeniably friendly vibe, won Barack Obama the 2008 presidential election. Change was a message a nation could believe in, if only it was presented in the right typeface.

Not only was his message just right in Gotham, but Obama’s entire campaign was right in Gotham. Because of their determination to keep a cohesive brand across all of their communications, same colors, same graphic style and same typeface, the Obama campaign presented a single-minded visual strategy that allowed them to deliver their campaign’s message with greater impact. Where campaigns in the past picked a logo and then used several different typefaces across their campaign, Obama’s designers were resolute. From the first caucus until the final election, all of their campaign materials were on brand. Obama’s campaign accomplished very easily what corporations sometimes cannot achieve. 

Gotham also didn’t carry any of the baggage of a classic face. It was almost too ordinary to be a part of a presidential election. Many postulate, however, that that was exactly the point. Gotham exudes trustworthiness because it has been seen everywhere. In the kind of media driven campaign that candidates lead today, Gotham had a particular usefulness that most classically designed typefaces do not: it’s easy to read on the screen. There is plenty of space between the letters, which makes it much easier to read when viewed on an angle, as supporters on the ground might be seeing it. Gotham excels in such a space, among a crowd, and even more so when these images and signs were shown on television. 

“Seeing our work in the Obama campaign, and now on the website for The White House, is absolutely one of the most meaningful things I’ve ever experienced, and it’s still a little surreal.” —Jonathan Hoefler, Design Bureau, July 2011

By comparison, the typefaces in use by Obama’s competition, John McCain and Hillary Clinton, were rife with baggage. McCain’s face, Optima, is most prominently known for its use on the Vietnam War Memorial. It was a clever choice to remind McCain supporters that their candidate was a Vietnam Veteran himself. However, by 2007, it was a perplexing choice to make, Jonathan Hoefler commented, because by then, Optima was most visible in the hygiene aisle of the drug store, favored by pharmaceutical companies for its legibility. 

Campaign signage for John McCain’s 2008 Presidential Campaign, set in Optima.

Clinton’s New Baskerville was also a snooze of a serif, something that could have been seen on the back of a box of cereal or across a mildly embarrassing medical ointment. 

Campaign signage for Hillary Clinton’s 2008 Presidential Campaign, set in New Baskerville.

This is why Obama’s use of Gotham was such a success, because the only thing that Gotham is working hard at is being Gotham. Frere-Jones designed it to capture the idea of comfortable authority, the perfect typeface to be employed by the Commander in Chief. 

J: We start with a capital H and a capital O. H being a typical square character and O being a typical round character. And once your H and your O are locked down, you can design a capital D which is half square and half round.  T: …Once those are drawn, they become the foundation for what follows.  —Font Men, 2013 

After Frere-Jones signed the Sale and Assignment of Type Fonts, fully transferring over the rights to the Dowry Fonts, as well as an employment agreement with Hoefler Type Foundry, he believed that there would be an additional agreement between himself and Hoefler. This agreement would deal with the business of transferring half of the company from Hoefler to Frere-Jones. However, there were multiple delays. As they were friends and now business partners (in everything but the paperwork) Frere-Jones respected Hoefler’s delays, which cited a variety of reasons including work and personal pressures. Frere-Jones believed, somewhat naively, that the situation would work itself out. 

During the interim, Hoefler presented himself and Frere-Jones as equal partners, in a series of e-mail communications with clients, always allowing his respect for Frere-Jones show through these mundane conversations: “…my new (and as-yet-unannounced) partnership with Tobias Frere-Jones has opened the floodgates for new work;” “…setting up my new partnership with Tobias Frere-Jones (you know his Interstate family, among others);” “…that Tobias Frere-Jones, my partner at the studio, has been noodling with for some time.” 

If Hoefler received an interview request, he would usually schedule the meeting to include Frere-Jones: “my partner Tobias Frere-Jones has been kind enough to let me shanghai him into joining us, since we’re far more fun as a tag team effort.” And they were so much fun as a pair, most definitely. From the sound of it, in it’s heyday, Hoefler & Frere-Jones, must have been the most excellent of adventures. 

“This was a process that produced better work. I think the other part of it is that there aren’t many other people that I’ve met who’s opinions I value as much as Tobais’.”  —Jonathan Hoefler, Font Men, 2013

In 2012, Mitt Romney’s design team borrowed from Obama’s arsenal, and selected their own H&FJ typeface to brand their campaign, the effortlessly masculine Mercury. 

Campaign signage for Mitt Romney’s 2012 Presidential Campaign, set in Mercury.

It was commissioned by Esquire, another men’s lifestyle magazine, from Hoefler prior to the commencement of his partnership with Frere-Jones in 1999. It was designed for headlines, but quickly became a part of the magazine’s editorial openers. Mercury is very tightly wound, and creates an excited calm on the page. It is, like all typefaces with the Hoefler & Frere-Jones name, a gorgeous workhorse, and although it didn’t win Romney the election, it remains one of H&FJ’s more seminal accomplishments. 

For his own campaign in 2013, Barack Obama’s presidential office requested an updated version of Gotham. Frere-Jones designed Gotham with Serifs, which is not yet available to the public. 

Gotham with Serifs, exclusively for Obama’s 2012 Presidential Campaign

The effect of the serifed Gotham to Obama’s campaign materials was not to make it stuffy or conservative. Rather, it was as if H&FJ had introduced Gotham: All Grown Up. Gotham with Serifs had been through four years in the Oval Office and it knew better than anyone else how to run the United States of America. 

“The decade that we’ve worked together has been everything I’d ever hoped, and more.” —Jonathan Hoefler, Design Bureau, July 2011

In the Spring to 2012, Hoefler said that he would complete the transfer of equity after the launch of the Cloud, a new service designed to deliver Hoefler & Frere-Jones typefaces to the web, a product that was a longtime coming as far as the graphic design world was concerned. 

After the Cloud finally launched in 2013, Hoefler revealed to Frere-Jones, for the first time, in October, that he did not intend to transfer fifty percent of the company to Frere-Jones. 

On January 17, 2014, the day after Frere-Jones filed his complaint with the court, Hoefler released a statement explaining that with Tobias’ departure, the company founded by Jonathan Hoefler in 1989 (Hoefler & Frere-Jones née Hoefler Type Foundry) would subsequently be known as Hoefler & Co.

J: We do have a longstanding disagreement on the height of the lowercase t.  T: Oh, okay, alright. Yeah. Alright, there’s a thing with the lowercase t. Okay.  J: That is—that is the only point of contention.  —Font Men, 2013 

In 2008, Gotham crushed Optima in the national polls. If the 2012 Gotham vs. Mercury fight for the Oval Office taught us anything new about about graphic design, it taught us this: 

An H&FJ typeface always wins. 

[fontofyou]

The “Share a Coke” campaign isn’t Stupid–the Typography Is

When logos become typefaces

The “Share a Coke” campaign has been annoying me for weeks, but it wasn't until a few days ago that I was able to pinpoint exactly what was irritating me.

At first I thought it was the idea in general. I complained to my typophiles in crime, Cody & Jess. The whole thing is so random. What are the chances you actually get a Coke that makes sense?

They argued that the chance of getting something that did make sense, made you want to share it via all your social networks even more. Hell, Jess and her friend Lauren shared pictures of “Share a Coke with Lauren” and “Share a Coke with Jess”months ago from across the pond (the campaign started overseas before it came to the US a few weeks ago). 

So, ugh. They were right. 

While the two of them got the campaign, Jess and Cody shared in my annoyance about it; something was off. We suggested a few different ideas before it hit us: the custom typeface Coke had commissioned to match their logo had been right in front of us all along, but we were too distracted by the campaign itself to notice how much we didn’t like it.

It’s no surprise Coke chose to expand their logo into a typeface. Lettering is making a comeback. These days we hear a heck of a lot about typography in terms of the web, but there are a whole slew of designers reviving lettering styles once considered old fashioned. Just check out Sign Paintersor walk past one of the 5 million coffee shops in Brooklyn (all hand lettered errrthang).

Coke’s typeface, called You, was designed by Ian Brignell of Toronto for the launch of the “Share a Coke” campaign in Australia sometime in 2012. If you look at Brignell’s other work, you can tell he’s a stellar lettering artist. The guy is kind of a superstar—lettering for everything from Chapstick to Crown Royal.

You by Ian Brignelli

Okay, so let’s talk about the nitty-gritty. Is You designed according to its source material (the Coke logo)? Yes. Technically, this is a job well done. 

The problem then? The Coke logo is not a typeface. It’s a logo. 

Each letter in You isn’t so bad on its own. It’s when the letters begin to make words that the trouble arises. Things can go awry when Coke can put anything on their bottle in their sacred logo lettering. Behold, “vos anus.”

Missing tittle over the i. "vos amis" becomes "vos anus." Whoops. 

The fact that this says “vos anus” (instead of the intended vos amis) isn’t even the issue. Look at the m and the i next to each other. They’re not typographically pleasant. It feels like “m” is kicking “i” to the curb.

Check out the Coke Logo on it’s own. We love this logo. We always have. It references the classic “Coca-Cola” logo but also ties in modern typographic influences. 

And see how much better “Co” and “ke” fits together in the Diet Coke logo? Instead of “k” bumping “e” to the side, they form a ligature. And #tgod for that, because without the ligatures, this logo wouldn’t be so great. The lack of ligatures is what we get with You, making it a flop.

If you live in the tri-state area, you probably remember the “You’re on (diet) Coke” ads. Who are we kidding? Of course you remember them. Super ballsy on Coke’s end. You know what else? They used a secondary typeface. Revolutionary, I know. But hey, look how good this looks.

It’s a simple sans-serif. Is it a really vanilla typographic choice? Yes, but it looks nice and its not You, which had already been designed and could have been used instead. Coke should have used something similar for “Share a Coke.”

All the complaining about You aside, the “Share a Coke” campaign works. Back when Jess and Cody were explaining it’s brilliance, I insisted I’d never take a picture of a stupid Coke can. 

Today, I stopped at The Meat Hook with David. We ordered two Diet Cokes with our sandwiches. His: “Share a Coke with a Go-Getter.” Mine: “Share a Coke with your BFF.” I took a photo and now I’m writing this. You win Coke, even if your typeface doesn’t. Well played.

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