| Category | Sans-serif |
|---|---|
| Designer(s) | Morris Fuller Benton |
| Foundry | American Type Founders |
News Gothic is a realist sans-serif typeface designed by Morris Fuller Benton, and released by the American Type Founders (ATF) in 1908. The typeface was originally drawn in two lighter weights, a medium text weight using the title News Gothic, and a closely related light weight marketed under the name Lightline Gothic. The typeface family was enlarged in 1958 with the addition of two bold weights. News Gothic is similar in proportion and structure to Franklin Gothic also designed by Benton.
News Gothic, like other Benton sans serif typefaces, follows the grotesque model. Shapes which distinguish it from the neo-grotesque are the two-story lowercase a and the two-story lowercase g. Also distinctive are the blunt terminus at the apex of the lowercase t, and the location of the tail of the uppercase Q completely outside the bowl. The letter forms are compact, and descenders are shallow. The typeface differs from other realist sans-serifs in its organic shapes and subtle transitions of stroke width, all contributing to a less severe, humanist tone of voice. For much of the twentieth century News Gothic was used in newspaper and magazine publishing.
News Gothic is available in standard, condensed, and extra condensed widths, each with a matching bold and italic. The standard width typeface is available in light, standard, demi, and bold weights, each with a matching italic. The condensed and extra condensed widths are ideal for use in tables and parts lists.
Because there is no active descendant of the American Type Founders Corporation making digital typefaces, News Gothic has been revived in digital form in many different versions from different sources. Adobe, Monotype, Linotype, Bitstream and The Font Bureau all have their own versions.
The use of the term "Gothic" is an early twentieth century misnomer for sans-serifs, found mostly in the United States and Canada. In the UK the term Gothic is occasionally used, but more often the term "grotesque" is used for sans-serifs. In Germany the term "Grotesk" is used.
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No. 2 is an enhanced version of News Gothic produced by the D. Stempel AG type foundry in 1984. It adds more weights to the News Gothic family than were available in other versions.
The OpenType version of the No. 2 family comes in 6 weights with complementary italic fonts, supports ISO Adobe 2, Adobe CE, Latin Extended character sets.
Benton Sans is an expanded font family from the Font Bureau, based on News Gothic.
Linotype Gothic, which was based on Heidelberg Gothic,[1][2] is a variant with italic type glyphs.
A Cyrillic version was developed for ParaType in 2005 by Dmitry Kirsanov, based on Bitstream's version of News Gothic.