Gotham: the Typeface of the Century

Origin of Type Specimens

Early printers and type founders created specimen sheets to showcase their typographical options for customers. These sheets showcased each letter, number, and special character available in particular fonts, as well as oblique and bold variants. Type Specimens typically include the development and designer of the typeface. Printing houses and type designers have used specimens since the fifteenth century as sales tools. Now, printed specimens allow us to study typefaces, choose and plan typography, and better understand letterforms. These also aid in selecting fonts available to purchase for a designer’s font library. In addition, specimens provide a glimpse of a typeface’s attributes, style, and nuances of its letterforms.

Typography Today

Nearly all media use today is screen-based, whether it be via television, phone, or laptop. Thus, different media can support various typographical functions, freeing the printed specimen to perform more artistically. In addition, digital technologies revolutionized the structure of typography with OpenType fonts to include opportunities for animation, three-dimensional font, distortions, font lightening, and other dynamic features.

Gotham

Gotham is widely considered one of the most successful typefaces designed in the twenty-first century. GQ magazine initially commissioned the Gotham typeface, whose editors sought a fresh, masculine, and geometric sans-serif font. According to Jonathan Hoefler, editors claim they needed something to lend an established and credible voice to the magazine.

Tobias Frere-Jones and Jesse Ragan spearheaded the typeface design with inspiration from Frere-Jones’ hometown of New York City. Camera in hand, Frere-Jones walked the streets of Manhattan to find source material in the vernacular lettering of older buildings. His primary influence came from the Eighth Avenue facade of the Port Authority Bus Terminal. About his strategy, Frere-Jones stated, “I suppose there’s a hidden personal agenda in the design: to preserve those old pieces of New York that could be wiped out before they’re appreciated.”

The letterforms are reminiscent of 1920s sans-serifs like Futura when lettering and architecture were reduced to the bare essentials. Frere-Jones characterized the simplicity of the type as the kind of letter an engineer would make, not the kind a designer would make. Though similar to Futura’s geometric shape, Gotham’s letterforms have a more uniform width, taller x-height, and wider apertures. Reviews identify Gotham as American but also specific to the “blocky, no-nonsense architectural lettering that dominated the New York streetscape.”

Variants

The font was released in 2000 and is now owned by the Hoefler & Co. Foundry. Gotham was released with an oblique font and a variety of widths. Hoefler & Co. Foundry introduced a rounded variant in 2007 and later released a Narrow and Extra Narrow in 2009. For Obama’s 2012 re-election campaign, Hoefler and Frere-Jones added serifs to the Gotham typeface, though the font was not released for public use. The Hoefler & Co. Foundry added Cyrillic and Greek letters in 2015. Later, Chris Simpson designed the Metropolis typeface based on Gotham.

Notable Uses

Advertisements by Coca-Cola, the Tribeca Film Festival, and Qwest and television shows like Maury and Saturday Night Live used the Gotham typeface. In addition, the 2008 Barack Obama campaign adopted the Gotham font and later commissioned an adaptation of Gotham with added serifs for the 2012 Obama re-election campaign. The National September 11 Memorial & Museum logo, designed by Landor Associates, uses Gotham and Verlag, another typeface designed by Hoefler and Frere-Jones. In 2014, social media platform Twitter announced a transition from Helvetica Neue to Gotham typeface. Gotham is also used as the official font of New York University, the Singapore University of Technology and Design, Rowan University, and Michigan State University. Finally, Netflix used Gotham until 2018, when it created its own typeface to reduce licensing expenses.

Gotham Type Specimen

While creating type specimens for Gotham, I wanted to feature the “old New York” that inspired Frere-Jones. With the perfect image to encompass those qualities, I set “Gotham” behind the skyline to reinforce the importance of the architecture. I kept the color palette simple to represent the old black and white photography. Initially, the “Development” paragraphs were wider to shorten the length so the length would match the other paragraphs. However, this made them look slightly off-center but not enough to justify their location. Instead, I created two columns of equal width.

I found more images that showcase the iconic New York architecture and designed more with those. Again, I set “Gotham” behind the skyline to feature the architecture and continued with a black and white color palette. With this particular image, the central high-rise tower and the ‘h’ were just left of center so I moved those to create a more uniform central look. The overall aesthetic resembles a movie poster, but I wanted to continue with more variety. Later, this one seemed to feature the most “no-nonsense,” architectural, and simplistic characteristics of the Gotham typeface.

I had good intentions with this one. Instead of using “Gotham” behind the skyline, I wanted to merge “Gotham” with the highway. However, the text blended in too well with the image when using any color other than white. I wanted to use darkening colors to create a sense of distance. Alas, I had to outline the text with white to make it visible. Instead of removing the sky from the image, I also wanted to keep the clouds.

For this design, I focused on the simplistic architecture of older buildings. I used the roadway to create a slanted edge between the image and the background color. With a unique edge on the image, I also slanted the "development" paragraphs and sample text to give the design some "spunk."

References

Amado, P., & Silva, A. C. (2016). The evolution of the type specimen book. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ol3DQyIs9oE.

Hoefler&Co. (n.d.). Fonts by Hoefler&Co. https://www.typography.com/fonts/gotham/design-notes.

Hustwit, G. (2008, February 19). A Font We Can Believe In. Helvetica Film. https://www.helveticafilm.com/newblog/2008/02/19/a-font-we-can-believe-in/.

Standard Deviations. (2011). Tobias Frere-Jones. Gotham. 2000: MoMA. The Museum of Modern Art. https://www.moma.org/collection/works/139301.