Futura Specimen Book by Xiaoyi Zeng

FU TU RA

Geometric Giant Star

Clear

Elegant

Modern

Space

Priority

FUTURA Specimen book

Universe

Future

Timeless

Interstellar

Luminosity

Impactful

Bright

Versatile Active galaxy Exploration Practical

Comet

Sleek Bold

Simple

ook Distinct

Lunar

Solid

Composed

Blue

Absolute zero

Adventure

CONTENTS

7 Introduction 8 Birth of Futura Growth of Futura

10 Type Family 12 Typeface

Type Anatomy Text Samples Glyphs Hand lettering

25 Bibliography

Introduction

Futura is a geometric sans-serif typeface designed by Paul Renner and released in 1927.It was designed as a contribution on the New Frankfurt-project. It is based on geometric shapes that became representative of visual elements of the Bauhaus design style of 1919â&#x20AC;&#x201C; 33.It is widely used today and its popularity is only on the rise.

Birth

1878 – 1956

Paul Friedrich August Renner (August 9, 1878 – April 25, 1956) was a typeface designer. In 1927, he designed the Futura typeface, which became one of the most successful and mostused types of the 20th century. He was born in Wernigerode, Germany and died in Hödingen. He had a strict Protestant upbringing, being educated in a 19th-century Gymnasium. He was brought up to have a very German sense of leadership, of duty and responsibility. He disliked abstract art and many forms of modern culture, such as jazz, cinema, and dancing. But equally, he admired the functionalist strain in modernism. Thus, Renner can be seen as a bridge between the traditional (19th century) and the modern (20th century).

Paul Renner

1927 Renner worked in pre-Nazi Germany. When he designed Futura, he used the text die Schrift unserer Zeit or â&#x20AC;&#x153;the typeface of our time.â&#x20AC;? He was a painter, architect, and designer who participated in the ideological and artistic debates this period. In designing this font, he was following the ideals of the Bauhaus design philosophy, that is that a modern typeface should express modern models, rather than imitate or be based on something done in another time. It is geometrically constructed, without decoration. Futura still communicates a clean ef ciency and forwardness.

of Futura

Growth of Futura

HERE MEN FROM THE PLANET EARTH FIRST SET FOOT UPON THE MOON JULY 1969, A. D. WE CAME IN PEACE FOR ALL MANKIND”. Why was Futura chosen for the task of communicating this message? Well, with its crisp, geometrically derived letter forms, Futura speaks in a clear and calm voice of an exciting modern age. When Paul Renner designed Futura in Germany in 1927, he wanted it to be new and modern, rather than a revival (or redesign) of an old font. He believed that his typeface should look and feel modern, and Futura still manages that more than 85 years later. It isn’t the longest-serving geometric sans serif typeface (that honour is held by the slightly more Germanic-looking typeface Erbar) but Futura is arguably the most successful. Futura’s alphabet is typified by efficiency and clarity. Each stroke seems to reject the history of typography wholesale – there are no serifs, flourishes, no real contrasting weight between strokes. The letter O is a Moonlike perfect circle. Other letters, such as the a, b and d are made from similarly circular bowls. Letter terminals finish cleanly and abruptly. Yet despite bold design choices, Futura still manages to carry a warmth with it. The proportions are well balanced, particularly in the lower case. The circular derivation of some of Futura’s lower case letterforms gives them a pleasing quality, with the x-height and the letter width being similar. The curve of the lower case u or the descender on the g are softly seductive in contrast to angular w and y’s straight descender.

Ty p e F a m i l y

PACK MY

p a c k m y

BOX WITH b o x

with

F I V E five

D O Z E N dozen

LIQUOR liquor

J U G S jugs

Futura Light: abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz 123456789 ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ Futura Book: abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz 123456789 ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ Futura Medium: abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz 123456789 ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ Futura Condensed Medium: abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz 123456789 ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ Futura Bold: abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz 123456789 ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ Futura Condensed Extra Bold: abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz 123456789 ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ

Ty p e f a c e

Ty p e A n a t o m y Futura Medium

Pointed apexes with deep overshoot

Te x t S a m p l e s

The Space Age arrives: Robots to the moon Futura Book With the shocking launch of Sputnik 1 in October 1957, the moon changed from a distant silver disk in the sky to a real place, a probable destination for probes and people. The Soviets struck first, flying Luna 1 by the moon in January 1959. They followed this success with a number of other robotic probes, culminating later the same year with Luna 3, which photographed the far side of the moon, never visible from Earth. From these early, poor quality images, we discovered that the far side has surprisingly little of the dark, smooth 14

mare plains that cover about a third of the near side. Other surprises would soon follow. In response to the 1961 flight of Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin, President John F. Kennedy committed the United States to landing a man on the moon by the end of the decade. The Apollo program greatly accelerated interest in exploring the moon. To ensure that human crews could safely land and depart from the lunar surface, it was important to understand its environment, surface and processes. At the

Counter erodes stem

A and g have same basic shape, g has deep half-circle descender with horizontal terminal

same time, the robotic precursors would collect valuable information, constituting the first scientific exploration of another planetary body. Americaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s first step was the Ranger series of hard landers. These probes were designed to photograph the lunar surface at increasing levels of detail before crashing into the surface. After several heartbreaking failures, Ranger 7 succeeded in sending back detailed television pictures of Mare Nubium (Sea of Clouds) in July 1964. From the Ranger probes, we dis-

Lowcase J is simply a straight line with a round dot

covered that craters, those strange holes that pepper the lunar surface, range down in size to the very limits of resolution. Micrometeorite bombardment has ground up the surface rocks, creating a fine powder (called regolith). Two more Ranger spacecraft flew to the moon, culminating with the 1965 Live From the Moon television images from Ranger 9, careening into the spectacular lunar crater Alphonsus.

NUMERALS

Te x t S a m p l e s Futura Condensed Extra Bold

Lunar Exploration: Past and Future By Paul D. Spudis, Lunar and Planetary Institute

Futura Condensed Medium The moon has held our imaginations for millennia, yet it is only in modern times that we have visited this body, first with robotic machines and then with astronauts. Exploration of the moon has taught us much about the evolution of the solar system and ourselves. We’ve known for centuries about the effects on tides and biological cycles from a waxing and waning moon. But it took space-age exploration to show us how the moon is connected to human existence on a very fundamental level. Futura Bold

Apollo: The Humans Follow Futura Medium Apollo was the finest hour of America’s space program. In just eight years, we had gone from zero human spaceflight capability to landing men on the surface of the moon. From these missions, scientists developed a new view of the origin and evolution of the planets and of life on Earth The 1968 Christmastime flight of Apollo 8 was a milestone – humans left low Earth orbit and reached the moon, circling it for almost a day. For the first time, people gazed on the moon from orbit. They found it desolate and gray, but saw nothing to prevent journeying the final 62 miles to the surface. In May of 1969, Apollo 10 orbited the moon, testing the lunar lander. It was a dress rehearsal for the manned landing to come. Each of the Apollo missions – and the astronauts who remained in the orbiting Command Module during the subsequent landed missions – took hundreds of high-resolution photographs of the moon’s surface. Their visual observations added to the burgeoning knowledge of lunar geology.

Futura Light In a harrowing descent marked by program alarms from an overloaded computer and freezing fuel lines, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin in Apollo 11 safely landed in Mare Tranquillitatis (Sea of Tranquility) on July 20, 1969. They walked on the moon for over 2 hours, collecting rocks and soil and laying out experiment packages. From the Apollo 11 samples, we learned that the dark maria are ancient volcanic lavas, having crystallized over 3.6 billion years ago. Lunar samples are similar in chemical composition to Earth rocks but extremely dry, with no evidence for any significant water on the moon, past or present. 17

Italic

Futura Medium Italic

The moon throws stones at us: Lunar meteorites In 1982, we made a startling discovery. A meteorite found in Antarctica, ALHA 81005, is from the moon! The rock is a complex regolith breccia, similar to those returned by the Apollo 16 mission in 1972. We have since found over 50 meteorites that, as determined from their unique chemical composition, come from the moon. These rocks were blasted off the lunar surface by impacts, then captured and swept up by Earth as it moves through space. The lunar meteorites come from random places all over the moon and they provide data complementary to the Apollo samples and the global maps of composition obtained by Clementine and Lunar Prospector.

Ligatures Futura Medium

infinity fly

Weight Comparison Futura Bold, Medium, Condensed Medium and Book

Glyphs

0 1 2 3 4 5 6 ! " # $ % & ' ( ) / . - , + * : ; < = > ? @ A B C D E [ \ ] ^ _ ` { | } ~ ¡ ¢ £ ¤ ¥ ¦ § ¨ © ª « ¬ ® ¯ ° ± ² ³ ´ µ ¶ · ¹ º » ¼ ½ ¾ ¿ À Á Â Å Æ Ç È É Ê Ë Ì Í Î Ï Ð Ñ Ò Ó Ô Õ Ö à ß Þ Ý Ü Û Ú Ù Ø × á â ã ä å æ ç è é ê ë ì í î ï ð ñ ò ó ô õ ö ÷ ø ù ú û ü ý þ ÿ Ā ā Ă ă Ą ą Ć ć Ĉ ĉ Ċ ċ Č č Ď ď Đ đ Ē Ĕ ĕ Ė ė Ę ę Ě ě Ĝ ĝ Ğ ğ Ġ ġ Ģ ģ Ĥ ĥ Ħ ħ Ĩ ĩ Ī ī Ĭ ĭ Į į İ Ĳ ĳ Ĵ ĵ Ķ ķ ĸ Ĺ ĺ Ļ ļ Ľ ľ Ŀ ŀ Ł ł Ń ń Ņ ņ Ň ň ŉ Ō ō Ŏ ŏ Ő ő Œ œ Ŕ ŕ Ŗ ŗ Ř ř Ś ś Ŝ ŝ Ş ş Š š Ţ ţ Ť ť Ŧ ŧ Ũ ũ Ū ū Ŭ ŭ Ů ů Ű ű Ų ų Ŵ ŵ Ŷ ŷ Ÿ Ź ź Ż ż Ž ž ƒ Ș ș ʻ ʼ ˆ ˇ ˘ ˙ ˚ ˛ ˜ Ω Δ π‍ – — ‚ “ ” „ † ‡ • … ‰ ‹ › ⁄ € ™ Ω ∂ ∏ ∆ ∑ − ∕ ∙ √ ∞ ∫ ≈ ≠ ≤ ≥ ◊  ﬁﬂ � ġ Ģ Ĥ ĥ Ħ ħ Ĩ ĩ Ī ī Ĭ ĭ Į į İ ı Ĳ ĳ Ĵ ĵ Ķ ķ ĸ Ĺ ĺ Ļ ļ ��

â&#x20AC;&#x153;Futura supports up to 78 different languages such as Spanish, English, Portuguese, German, French, Turkish, Italian, Polish, Kurdish (Latin), Romanian, Dutch, Hungarian, Kazakh, Czech, Serbian (Latin), Swedish, Belarusian (Latin), Croatian, Slovak, Finnish, Danish, Lithuanian, Latvian, Slovenian, Irish, Estonian, Basque, Luxembourgian, and Icelandic in Latin and other scripts.â&#x20AC;?

Futuraâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Counter

Hand Lettering

Futura Bold

Hand lettering of Futura Medium A, a, X and V.

Hand lettering of Futura Bold A and a.

Bibliography accessed from http://idsgn.org/posts/know-your-type-futura/ Access date: September 28. 2017(Page: 7) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Renner/ Access date: September 28. 2017(Page: 9â&#x20AC;&#x201C;10) https://www.nasa.gov/50th/50th_magazine/lunarExploration.html Access date: September 28. 2017(Page: 14â&#x20AC;&#x201C;18) https://typewritingblog.wordpress.com/2013/02/01/futura-first-font-on-the-moon/ Access date: September 28. 2017(Page: 11) https://www.fontshop.com/families/linotype-futura/ Access date: September 28. 2017(Page: 21)

This book is designed by Xiaoyi Zeng for Typography at SUNY Oneonta in Fall 2017.