Study of a Typeface
Franklin Gothic
Morris Fuller Benton, The American Type Foundry, 1905.
Franklin Gothic
A
rguably the most widely used font ever produced, Franklin Gothic was designed by Morris Fuller Benton between 1903 and 1912 for American Type Founders
Company. Because of its stead popularity, the typeface was updated in 1979 for ITC by Victor Caruso. This new version included more weights and became the standard choice for newspapers and advertising.
Historical Context
F
ranklin Gothic was designed in 1902, and released in 1905 by the American Type Foundry. This decade opened the century with some amazing feats like the first flight
by the Wright brothers, Henry Ford’s first Model-T, and Einstein’s Theory of Relativity. Technology was booming, and there were a great many inventions - the storage battery, the brownie camera, the electric typewriter, indoor air conditioning, the neon lamp, the Universal Electric Motor, the Photostat Machine, and windshield wipers. Theodore Roosevelt was elected President of The United States in 1901. There were also hardships like the Boxer Rebellion and the San Francisco Earthquake. The Plague struck India, which was still a British colony then. The 1900s also saw the introduction of the first ever comic book, the first silent movie, and the teddy bear.
America in the early 20th Century.
Created in 1892 by the merger of 23 type foundries.
The American Type Foundry
B
y the late 1880’s, there were some thirty-four foundries in the United States and in 1892 twenty-three foundries were brought together to form the American Type
Founders Company. Key to the success of this merger was the inclusion of MacKellar, Smiths, & Jordan Co. of Philadelphia, with assets of over six million dollars, the Cincinnati Type Foundry of Henry Barth, which brought with it the patents to his Barth Typecaster, and Benton, Waldo Foundry of Milwaukee, which included Linn Boyd Benton and his all important Benton Pantograph. With the inclusion of the Barth Caster and the Benton Pantograph, ATF immediately became not only the largest, but also the most technologically advanced foundry in the world.
Typefaces created by Morris Fuller Benton include: Academy, Agency FB, Alternate Gothic, ATF Bodoni, Bank Gothic, Broadway, Bulmer, Canterbury Old Style, Century Old Style, Cheltenham, Clearface Gothic, Cloister, Commercial Script, Eagle Bold, Empire, Globe Gothic, Hobo, News Gothic, Odette, Parisian, Phenix American, Piranesi, ITC Souvenir, Linotype Stymie. 
Morris Fuller Benton
B
orn November 20, 1872, Morris Fuller Benton was born into the type business. The son of Linn Boyd Benton, inventor of the pantographic engraving machine, Morris
cut his teeth at an early age helping his father work on these machines. After graduating from Cornell, Benton joined the American Type Founders (ATF) as a type designer and would serve as its chief designer from 1900-1937. Benton was America’s most prolific type designer, having completed 221 typefaces, ranging from revivals of historical models like ATF Bodoni, to adding new weights to existing faces such as Goudy Old Style and to designing original designs such as Bank Gothic and Broadway. Benton’s large family of related neogrotesque sans-serif typefaces, known as “gothics” as was the norm at the time, includes Alternate Gothic, News Gothic and Franklin Gothic.
Chief Designer, American Type Foundry, 1900 - 1937.
Realist/Transitional, ‘Gothic’ Sans serif typeface.
Transitional typefaces are relatively straight in appearance and have less line width variation than Humanist sans-serif typefaces. Transitional sans-serif is sometimes called “anonymous sans-serif” due to its relatively plain appearance. Similar Fonts are Standard, Bell Centennial, MS Sans Serif, Highway Gothic, and Arial.
The Typeface
F
ranklin Gothic was the third in a series of sans serif faces designed after ATF was founded. Morris Benton was asked to develop a new sans serif font for the burgeoning
advertising requirements, presumably in an attempt to improve the existing choice (the numerous and apparently undistinguished cuts in the 19th century.) Benton’s drawings in 1902 were of a face that did indeed incorporate the qualities of the early 19th century models although it was not released as a font of metal type until 1905. As he designed Franklin Gothic, Benton was likely influenced by the earlier sans serif designs released in Germany. Berthold had issued the Akzidenz Grotesk® series of typefaces (later known to American printers as “Standard”) in 1898. Franklin Gothic stands out from Akzidenz Grotesque and other sans serif typefaces by having odd characterful features, rather than a dowdy regular line.
The Name
C
ontroversy still surrounds how the typeface earned its name. Some sources believe that “Franklin” Gothic was named after the diplomat Benjamin Franklin, perhaps
in his honour, since he himself had no direct connection to the creation of the typeface. “Gothic,” on the other hand, was the American term for ‘sans serif.’ (The term was ‘Grotesque’ in Britain and ‘Grotesk’ in Germany.) At the time, the corporate body of the Boston Type and Sterotype Foundry had introduced a series of typefaces without serifs under the name Gothic. Since Franklin Gothic is an extra-bold sans serif typeface, Gothic became its surname. Franklin Gothic is the most distinctive of Benton’s sans serif typefaces,and has stayed in extensive use since – despite the explosion of more geometric sans serif typefaces during the first half of the 20th century.
‘Franklin’ for Benjamin Franklin, and ‘Gothic’ meaning ‘sans serif.’
Although newer typeface families such as Helvetica, Univers and FrutigerŽ have the same basic proportions and attributes as Franklin Gothic, the similarity ends there. Letterforms in Helvetica and comparable designs are fairly homogeneous. Franklin Gothic, on the other hand, retains all the strength and vitality that is typical of late 19th century American sans serif typefaces. Capitals are wide or ‘square’, lowercase letters share the proportions and letter shapes of serif typefaces, and character stroke weights have a far more obvious thick and thin contrast than most modern sans serif designs.
Standard Glyph Set
Analysis Weights At first, Benton drew only a single roman design for Franklin Gothic. However, this typeface caught the imagination of printers of the time, and ATF was compelled to add more variants to make a small type family. Benton drew a condensed design in 1905 and an extra condensed in 1906. Five years later, Benton finally added an italic to the family, and two years after that a shaded version was offered as the last Benton addition to the Franklin Gothic series.
After the introduction of European faces like Kabel and Futura in the 1930’s, Franklin Gothic was cast into typographic oblivion. But, after more than 30 years, it was rediscovered and in 1980, under license from ATF (which was barely in business at this time), ITC commissioned Victor Caruso to create four new weights of Franklin Gothic in roman and italic: book, medium, demi and heavy. This series was followed in 1991 by a suite of 12 condensed and compressed designs drawn by David Berlow.
Revival ITC Franklin Gothic was originally released as two designs: one for display type and one for text. When Adobe commissioned the early digital fonts of ITC Franklin Gothic, the fonts were based on the display design, but characters were modified and spaced so the same font could also be used at very small and very large sizes. This compromised Franklin Gothic’s design such that its performance was hampered at any size. Unfortunately, this multi-purpose Franklin Gothic design became the standard for the digital version of the typeface. Most graphic designers put up with this less-than-ideal suite of Franklin Gothic. David Berlow, however, could not. In the early 2000s, he proposed to ITC that Font Bureau rework the ITC Franklin Gothic family, enlarge it and once again separate it into distinct text and display designs. The new designs would then be available from both ITC and Font Bureau. ITC saw the obvious value in the collaboration, and work began in the first months of 2004.
First revived by Victor Caruso in 1980, and then by David Berlow in 1991.
g Two distinctive features of the lower case ‘g’ are that it is doubled -storeyed, and that it has a curled ear at the top. The thickness of the strokes also varies subtly, lending grace to the character.
Characteristics
a k
The lower case ‘a’ has a curved leg and like the ‘g’ is also double storeyed, inspired by characters from serif typefaces.
In the lowercase ‘k’, the leg extends from the middle of the arm, creating an angled junction.
t
The left, top side of the lowercase ‘t’ drifts slightly to the right instead of being completely straight. The tail just barely narrows at the end, similar to the top of the lower case f and tail of the lower case j.
A Q M G
The vertex extends to the base line.
Further similarity to serif-type characters is seen here - broad, heavy strokes are attached to lighter, thinner strokes.
The tail of the ‘Q’ is very distinctive and curls down from the bottom center. In the heavier weighs the tails shifts a bit to the right.
The terminal ends at an angle and not parallel to the baseline.
Minion Pro
Franklin Gothic
News Gothic
Helvetica
A
A
A
A
The stroke weights have thick and thin contrasts.
R
R
R
The leg of the R is straight as opposed to the curved leg in Helvetica’s R.
M
M
M
Q
Q
The stroke width in Franklin Gothic is thicker than that of News Gothic.
Q
The tail of the Q curls in a very distinctive way and goes below the baseline.
Comparisons
R M
Q
Minion Pro
Franklin Gothic
News Gothic
Helvetica
a
a
a
a
g
g
g
The stroke weight of the double storeyed ‘a’ varies like that of a serif character.
The double storeyed ‘g’ has a distinctive culred ear on top.
t e
g
t
t
t
e
e
e
The stroke of the ‘t’ is slightly inclined on the left side unlike in Helvetica where it is straight.
The terminal of the ‘e’ is not parallel to the baseline.
Comparisons
Numerals
Franklin Gothic
Minion Pro
News Gothic
Helvetica
1234567890 1 234567890 12 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0
1234567890
Franklin Gothic’s ‘1’ is very bold, and has a square appearance due to its wide base. The characteristic serif-like variation in stroke weight appears in the numerals as well. All the numerals are more curved and bold than those of News Gothic. The ‘1’ of Franklin Gothic is has a slab serif design, while in Helvetica it has no base.
Franklin Gothic has a well balanced relation of heaviness and lightness and a refreshing clarity. Its popularity is due to the fact that, unlike some other bold and assertive typefaces, it also has finesse, lightness, something warm and friendly—qualities that a needed in such places as outdoor billboards, book covers, advertisements, and posters.
Applications It is the official typeface of the Museum of Modern Art and New York University. The Bank of America uses its condensed form in their logo, and Cardiff University uses it as its main corporate typeface. It is used in the Houston Chronicle, the Onion Magazine, Time Magazine, and various section headlines of the New York Times. It was also used in the logo for Showtime, Frederator Studios, and the Conservative Party of Canada. Van Morrsion used it on the cover of Brown Eyed Girl, and was the resident typeface of the PBS series The Electric Compnay. And, closer to home, in NID, it was used in the 2008 edition of Young Designers.
Much after newspapers in the 1900s, Franklin Gothic is still used in the Houston Chronicle, as well as the New York Times, the Time Magazine and the print version of the Onion Magazine.
Star Wars subtitles.
Book Cover, Dagerous Frames, Nicholas J. G. Winter
The Ramones, Punk Rock Band.
Lawrence Weiner, one of the central figures in the formation of conceptual art in the 1960s, uses Franklin Gothic (generally condensed) in some of his artwork.
The Dark Knight, 2008.
MoMA.
Rocky, 1976.
It was used for the titles of You Don’t Know Jack, a series of computer games developed by Jellyvision and Berkeley Systems, that combines trivia with comedy.
Acknowledgements To begin with, I would like thank Morris Fuller Benton, designer of Franklin Gothic and father of more than two hundred typefaces, whose contribution to the world is immense and amazing and irreplacable. Next, I would like to thank Mr. Tarun Deep Girdher for his vast and invaluable knowledge, and incredibly helpful tips and inputs, without which I would not have been able to do even the slightest justice to this typeface and its brilliant designer. I would like to thank my batchmates for all the tips, ideas, help and moral support - especially moral support - which I could not have done without. And, my seniors for their guidance and suggestions which made a lot of difference to the final outcome. I also would like to thank Mahendra Bhai for introducing softwares like InDesign and Illustrator to us. Without his classes I would not even have been able to begin making this booklet. And, I would like to thank the staff in the IT centre for their assistance. And lastly i would like to mention that none of the images used in this booklet are my own, and i wish to acknowledge the various sources from where they were taken. Thank you.
20th Century Type, Lewis Blackwell.
References www.wikipedia.com www. about.com www.itcfonts.com www.planet-typography.com www.bookcoverarchive.com www.linotype.com www.moma.org people.artcenter.edu/~ljohnson1/specimen.pdf
Stuthi Vasudevan GDPD Graphic Design Semester 3, 2012-13 Typography Guide: Tarun Deep Girdher