Typ / ge / ography

BRODIE SWEENEY

First published 2013 This book is copyright. Apart from any fair dealing for the purpose of private study, criticism or review as permitted under the copyright act 1968, no part may be reproduced by any process without written permission. Enquires should be made to the manager of Blurb.

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Copyright © 2013 by: Brodie Sweeney

BRODIE SWEENEY

TO MY GRANDFATHER, I AM CONSTANTLY INSPIRED BY YOUR STRENGTH AND COURAGE. I AM PRIVLEDGED TO HAVE YOU IN MY LIFE.

TO MY GRANDMOTHER, FOR YOUR ENDLESS LOVE AND SUPPORT. YOU HAVE AN AMAZING INFLUENCE ON MY LIFE.

As designers our strongest tool can be the typefaces we use. Having knowledge of these tools is vital.

Knowing a typefaces origin and history can greatly influence the way in which we implement them into our designs.

Typgeography goes one step further then the history of a typeface and endeavors to create a relationship between typeface and geographic location in regards to use. This will help designers understand how some of their favorite typefaces are used across the globe.

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AMSTERDAM

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NEW YORK

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MÜNCHENSTEIN

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LONDON

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BOSTON

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HONG KONG

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MADRID

INTRO As we are aware, cities from all over the world are represented through vastly different identities. This can be in relation to location, history or culture.

However in the design world, a city’s identity can be represented with the use of typefaces.

Typgeography ventures around the globe exploring a few of the most popular typefaces in present times, linking them to their founding cities or the places that have adopted them into their identity.

AVENIR Amsterdam

AVENIR Avenir is a geometric sans-serif typeface designed by Adrian Frutiger in 1988, with three weights. Each weight with a roman and oblique version. The word avenir is French for “future” and the font takes inspiration from the early geometric sansserif typefaces, Erbar (1922), designed by Jakob Erbar, and Futura (1927), designed

by Paul Renner. Frutiger intended Avenir to be a more organic, humanist interpretation of these highly geometric types.

The city of Amsterdam uses Avenir as the principal typeface in its corporate identity.

The font was chosen when design bureau Eden Design & Communication won a citywide competition. This “symmetrical”, straight forward sans-serif of Adrian Frutiger is well suited to the identity of Amsterdam.

By selecting an established font instead of having one specifically created, the designers have given the availability top priority in Amsterdam’s identity.

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GOTHAM Gotham is a family of widely used geometric sans-serif digital typefaces designed by American type designer Tobias Frere-Jones in 2000. Frere-Jones began the research for Gotham by chronicling the many forms of vernacular lettering throughout New York City. What started as a collection of attractive letterforms quickly became a photographic expedition, in which FrereJones photographed every single scrap of public lettering in some of New York’s most historic, commercial neighbourhoods.

From this inspiration, Frere-Jones created Gotham, an appreciation of the old pieces of New York that may not remain for much longer. Since creation, Gotham has been highly visible due to its appearance in many notable places, including a large amount of campaign material created for Barack Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign, as well as the cornerstone of the One World Trade Center, the tower that was built on the site of the former World Trade Center in New York.

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GOTHAM New York

HELVETICA

M端nchenstein

HELVETICA Helvetica was developed in 1957 by Max Miedinger alongside Eduard Hoffmann at the Haas Type Foundry in, Münchenstein Switzerland. Haas set out to design a new sans-serif typeface that could compete with the successful Akzidenz-Grotesk in the Swiss market. Originally called Neue Haas Grotesk, its design was based on SchelterGrotesk and Haas’ Normal Grotesk. The aim of the new design was to create a neutral typeface that had great clarity, no intrinsic meaning in its form, and could be used on a wide variety of signage.

When Linotype adopted the typeface its design was reworked. After the success of Univers, Arthur Ritzel of Stempel redesigned Neue Haas Grotesk into a larger family. In 1960, the typeface’s name was changed by Haas’ German parent company Stempel to Helvetica in order to make it more marketable internationally.

Helvetica is among the most widely used sans-serif typefaces. Versions exist for the following alphabets/scripts: Latin, Cyrillic, Hebrew, Greek, Japanese, Korean, Hindi, Urdu, Khmer and Vietnamese.

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ALBERTUS Albertus a glyphic, serif typeface designed

by Berthold Wolpe between 1932 and 1940 for the Monotype Corporation type foundry, is named after Albertus Magnus, the thirteenth-century German philosopher and theologian. Wolpe studied as a metal engraver, and Albertus was modeled to resemble letters carved into bronze. The face began as titling capitals. Eventually a lowercase roman was added, and later an italic, which is distinct for its narrow character set.

Albertus is used throughout The United Kingdom and can be seen extensively in the country’s capital of London. For many years the typeface was used on the British coinage and on television series such as the The Prisoner, which began in 1967. Albertus also has constant presence in London as it is the chosen typeface for the street name signs throughout the city. Albertus is also frequently used by the world famous, British band Coldplay, featuring on many of their single and album covers.

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ALBERTUS London

FUTURA

Boston

FUTURA Futura is a geometric sans-serif typeface designed in 1927 by Paul Renner. It was designed as a contribution on the New Frankfurt-project. It is based on geometric shapes that are a representation of visual elements from the Bauhaus design style of 1919–1933. Commissioned by the Bauer Type Foundry, in reaction to Ludwig and Mayer’s seminal Erbar of 1922, Futura was eventually commercially released in 1936.

Futura has an appearance of efficiency and forwardness. The typeface is derived from simple geometric forms and is based on strokes of near-even weight.

The family was originally cast in Light, Medium, Bold, and Bold Oblique fonts in 1928. All of which now have Oblique fonts plus the addition of an Extra Bold Font.The use of Futura is evident throughout Boston.

Public safety departments, such as Police, Fire and EMS all use Futura Black as the typeface for logos and department vehicles.

The evidence of Futura’s success in the capital of Massachusett, also expands into their sporting teams. The most successful NBA basketball team in history, the Boston Celtics, uses Futura for the typeface to be used across their championship banners.

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MYRIAD Myriad is a humanist sans-serif typeface designed by Robert Slimbach and Carol Twombly for Adobe Systems. The typeface is best known for its usage by Apple Inc., replacing Apple Garamond as their corporate font since 2002. Myriad is easily distinguished from other sans-serif fonts due to its special “y” descender (tail) and slanting “e” cut, however Myriad does have similarities to Frutiger. The Myriad family includes condensed, normal and extended widths in a full range of weights. Letter proportions, clean shapes and extensive kerning pairs ensure a comfortable level of readability across all Myriad variants.

The Mass Transit Railway (MTR) of Hong Kong, is by far the most popular transport system throughout the city, uses Myriad as its corporate identity font. KCRC (the former rail transport company in Hong Kong) also used Myriad Condensed for English signage and text untill it was taken over by the MTR in 2007. Further presence of Myriad throughout Hong Kong and can be seen with the St. John Ambulance service. This charitable organization which was established in 1884, is one of Hong Kong’s longest serving ambulance services and since 2005 they have used Myriad for the English type in their identity.

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MYRIAD Hong Kong

GILL SANS Madrid

GILL SANS Gill Sans is a sans-serif typeface designed

by Eric Gill. The original design appeared in 1926 when Gill painted the Fascia over Douglas Cleverdon’s bookshop window in sans-serif capitals that would later be known as Gill Sans. Gill further developed it into a complete font family to combat the families of Erbar, Futura and Kabel.

Monotype Corporation later released Gill Sans in 1928.

Since 2001, Gill Sans was adopted as the official corporative typeface of the Spanish Government. This includes national forces of security and museums. The application of Gill Sans further expanded to be used alongside the Shield of Spain. Gill Sans is very prominent throughout Spain and especially the nations capital of Madrid as it also appears on all signage systems that are government controlled.

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CREDITS Fonts Avenir Gotham Helvetica Albertus Futura Myriad Gill Sans Helvetica Neue Optimus Princeps

Information Wikipedia.com Justcreative.com Linotype.com Typography.com Fonts.com

As designers our strongest tool can be the typefaces we use. Having knowledge of these tools is vital.

Knowing a typefaces origin and history can greatly influence the way in which we implement them into our designs.

Typgeography goes one step further then the history of a typeface and endeavors to create a relationship between typeface and geographic location in regards to use. This will help designers understand how some of their favorite typefaces are used across the globe.