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THE MUSEUM OF CONTEMORARY TYPOGRAPHY PRESENTS THE WORK OF

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MORRIS FULLER BENTON

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MUSEUM OF CONTEMPORARY TYPOGRAPHY

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Morris Fuller Benton – type designer, born 30. 11. 1872 in Milwaukee, USA, died 30. 6. 1948 in Morristown, USA Benton is credited as America’s most prolific designer of metal type, having (with his team) completed 221 typefaces, including revivals of historical models, like Bodoni and Cloister; original designs, such as Hobo, Bank Gothic, and Broadway; and adding new weights to existing faces, such as Century, Goudy Old Style and Cheltenham. Although he did not invent the concept, Benton working at ATF pioneered the concept of families of typeface designs, allowing consistency of appearance in different sizes, widths and weights.[5] This allowed ATF to capitalise on a successful typeface’s popularity and facilitated coherent layout and graphic design; its 1923 specimen book described its approach of creating families which could allow advertisers to “talk at command with varying emphasis and orchestral power [rather than using] a medley of display types.”[6]

Benton worked as the team leader of designers responsible for creating a basic design and then adapting it to different sizes and weights. He considered his work as a designer important and wrote a brief list of typefaces he considered his most important work in 1936, shortly before his retirement.

[7][8] Benton was relatively retiring in life: a 1936 interview described him as “one of the most difficult men to interview I have ever talked to...try to pin some honour on him, or give him credit for some achievement, and he will modestly sidestep with the remark that ‘Lady Luck helped me a lot there!’”[1]

BROADWAY

ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ First released in 1929, Broadway exudes the atmosphere of the Roaring Twenties. Thick black strokes on the left half of characters such as the ‘B’ and ‘O’ make the letterforms abstract and ornamental. Where thick and thin strokes meet, the letterforms feature angles rather than curves, similar to the way Art Deco treats natural forms. Broadway is ideal for the design of decorative posters and display material. With no descenders in the lowercase letterforms, Broadway accepts bold underlining without the usual trouble of disappearing descenders. In addition, due to its high contrast, Broadway remains visible on backgrounds of similar density, making it ideal for colorful work. For example, green lettering on a blue background would be difficult to read if the font were Arial, but the same colors would be easier to read with the text in Broadway.

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Each Bank Gothic is a rectilinear geometric sans-serif typeface designed by Morris Fuller Benton for the American Type Founders in 1930. The typeface is an exploration of geometric forms, and is contemporary with the rectilinear slab serif typeface City by Georg Trump. The typeface also bears comparison with late-nineteenth-century engraving faces.

In the 1980s, Mergenthaler Linotype Company created a digital version that includes small caps characters to map onto the lowercase keys of the keyboard. At the time, Linotype only digitized the medium weight of the family, and no PostScript version has been made.

A TYPOGRAPHICAL INTRODUCTION

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1501

Italics begin to be used as way to fit more words onto a page, saving the printer money.

Today, we use italics as a design detail or for emphasis when writing.

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Guttenberg invented movable typefaces, giving the world a cheaper way to obtain the written word. Up until this point, all written materials were done by hand, and were very costly to purchase. Guttenburg also created the first typeface, blackletter – it was dark, fairly practical, and intense, but not very legible.

Nicolas Jenson created Roman Type, inspired by the text on ancient roman buildings. It was far more readable than blackletter, and caught on quickly.

William Caslon created a typeface which features straighter serifs and much more obvious contrasts between thin and bold strokes. Today, we call this type style ‘old style’.

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John Baskerville created what we now call Transitional type, a Roman-style type, with very sharp serifs and lots of drastic contrast between thick and thin lines.

Firmin Didot and Giambattista Bodoni created the first ‘modern’ Roman typefaces (Didot, and Bodoni). The contrasts were more extreme than ever before, and created a very cool, fresh look.

Vincent Figgins created Egyptian, or Slab Serif – the first time a typeface had serifs that were squares or boxes.

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Contemporary

Swiss designer Max Miedinger created Helvetica, the most loved typeface of our time. This was a return to minimalism, and many other simplistic typefaces such as Futura surfaced around this time period.

With the internet, we have such a vast variety of old and new typefaces available for us to peruse and use. All these typefaces give us an abundance of options and looks for our designs today, and we’re not limited by just one or two typefaces like we would have been a few hundred years ago.

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1 8 1 6 William Caslon IV created the first typeface without any serifs at all. It was widely rebuked at the time. This was the start of what we now consider Sans Serif typefaces. During this time, type exploded, and many, many variations were being created to accommodate advertising.

Frederic Goudy became the world’s first full time type designer, developing numerous groundbreaking typefaces, such as Copperplate Gothic, Kennerly, and Goudy Old Style.

Type is everywhere – street signs, magazines, the web. Every typeface you see around you has been painstakingly and carefully planned out, and each has its own personality and vibe. But have you ever stopped to wonder how the typefaces we encounter everyday came to be? Who invented them, and why? If you’re interested in learning more about typography, you’ve come to the right place.

TERMINOLOGY EXPLAINED What’s the difference between a typeface and a font? Before you jump in, let’s clarify the terminology used. Typography is the art of creating the letters we use everyday. It’s designing them and creating them and making them real. A font is a collection or set of letters – they’re the mechanism you use to get your message across to your reader. Every letter and dash and semi colon would be considered part of a specific font. A typeface is the design you see – the style and look of a specific font.

Throughout history, typefaces have been influenced by technological advances, culture shifts, and just general boredom with the state of typography. Here’s how it all went down:

ABOUT THE MUSEUM

The Broad is a contemporary art museum founded by philanthropists Eli and Edythe Broad on Grand Avenue in downtown Los Angeles. Designed by Diller Scofidio + Renfro in collaboration with Gensler, the museum offers free general admission and presents an active program of rotating temporary exhibitions and innovative audience engagement. The Broad is home to more than 2,000 works of art in the Broad collection, which is one of the world's most prominent collections of postwar and contemporary art.

The 120,000-square-foot building features two floors of gallery space and is the headquarters of The Broad Art Foundation’s worldwide lending library, which has been loaning collection works to museums around the world since 1984.

Since opening in September 2015, The Broad has welcomed more than 2.5 million visitors. Generous support is provided by Leading Partner East West Bank.