GOTHAM

GOTHAM Typography project 2013

From the city of New York emerges a new hero: A hard working sans serif for the ages

A VANISHING STYLE INSPIRES A FONT Long before the emergence of a profession called “graphic design� there was signage. Up until the mid-twentieth century, the job of providing architectural lettering often fell to engineers or draftsmen, most of whom worked outside of the typographic tradition.

AN AMERICAN VERNACULAR Like most American cities, New York is host to a number of mundane buildings whose facades exhibit a distinctively American form of sans serif. This kind of lettering occurs in many media: steel, cast bronze or cast iron. Also s do countless

painted signs and lithographed posters, many dating back as far as the Work Pro-jects Administration of the 1930s.

Although there is nothing to suggest that the makers followed the same models, the consistency with which this style of letter appears suggests that these forms were once considered in some

THE QUICK BROWN FOX JUMPS OVER THE LAZY DOG

Gotham Regular

way elemental. But with the arrival of mechanical signmaking in the 1960s, these letters died out, completely vanishing from production.

During the first months of their collaboration, Hoefler and Frere-Jones discovered their mutual affection for this disappearing species of letter-

ing. In 2000, a commission to design a signature sans serif for GQ afforded them the chance to explore the style, for which Frere-Jones undertook a massive study of building lettering in New York.

The result is Gotham, a geometric sans serif.

K b A x K Q M G

Flat Apex Generous x-Height Arm & leg junction Non-descending tail Flat terminals Missing spur

Q e

y

b Offset counter e Horizontal crossbar y Minimal curve j Short descender un Reflected shapes ft Unbalanced crossbar

The very qualities inherited from outdoor signage, ease of reading at a distance, make Gotham an excellent choice for display size where the bold and unambiguous capitals are easily differentiated. And since Gotham has many recurring shapes, the space between letters becomes especially important in giving them form. The font’s generous x-height and short ascenders and descenders make it an economical choice for small text size as well.

G

CHARACTERISTICS Gotham’s many moods run from modern to nostalgic to brash to eloquent. From the lettering

M

that inspired it, Gotham inherited an honest tone that’s assertive but never imposing, friendly but never folksy, confident but never aloof.

A SUPERHERO FAMILY GOTHAM NARROW A compact variation, especially engineered for text sizes. Its narrow proportions make it a perfect fit for text columns. It’s designed to be space-efficient, not squeezed.

GOTHAM EXTRA NARROW Rounds out the Gotham family with sixteen fonts for both text and display. Its slender proportions is especially useful online, both in narrow columns and at small sizes and to all kinds of information-heavy design.

GOTHAM CONDENSED Gotham Condensed, home to nine different weights from Thin to Ultra.

Gotham offers italics in every weight, along with rarefied features like tabular figures, fractions, super- and subscripts, extended monetary symbols and covers more than 140 languages.

The fonts’ receptiveness to changes in size and spacing makes Gotham an especially elastic design, one capable of moving effortlessly from one style of dress to another.

REGULAR

NARROW

EXTRA NARROW

CONDENSED

Design by: Emil Bauer Ruby / www.artisticruby.com

Public spaces are teeming with handmade sans serifs that share the same underlying structure, an engineer’s idea of “basic lettering” that transcends both the characteristics of their materials and the mannerisms of their craftsmen. These are the cast bronze numbers outside office buildings that speak with authority, and the engravings on cornerstones whose neutral and equable style defies the passage of time. They’re the matter-of-fact neon signs that announce liquor stores and pharmaciesThese letters are straightforward and non-negotiable, yet possessed of great personality, and always expertly made. And although designers have lived with them for half a century, they remarkably went unrevived until 2000, when Hoefler & Frere-Jones introduced Gotham.