Bank Gothic
Category | Sans-serif |
---|---|
Classification | Geometric |
Designer(s) | Morris Fuller Benton |
Foundry | American Type Founders |
Re-issuing foundries | Bitstream, FontHaus, Linotype |
Bank Gothic is a rectilinear geometric sans-serif typeface designed by Morris Fuller Benton for the American Type Founders (ATF) 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 1980s, Linotype 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.
Cuts
Bank Gothic Pro
In 2010 FontHaus released an updated revival of the original Bank Gothic complete with a lowercase, a complement of small caps and a new suite of punctuation glyphs. The family consists of Light, Medium and Bold weights in both a regular and a condensed style. The new lowercase characters did not exist with the original release and were modeled after many similar Morris Fuller Benton designs released by The American Type Founders Company in the 1930s. Bank Gothic is a registered trademark of Grosse Pointe Group, LLC, and is licensed exclusively through DsgnHaus, Inc. d/b/a FontHaus.
DeLuxe Gothic
In 2003 letterforms artist Michael Doret began work on DeLuxe Gothic—a derivative version of American Type Founder's Bank Gothic. Unlike the 1930s original, Doret’s font contains lowercase characters. The DeLuxe Gothic Family was released in OpenType format in 2010 by Alphabet Soup Type Founders with both regular and condensed styles as well as traditional shortcaps. DeLuxe Gothic was the name originally used by the Intertype Corporation for its version of Morris Fuller Benton's Bank Gothic. Prior to its September 8, 2010 release, it was known as Bank Gothic AS.
Morris Sans
In 2005, Linotype editor Dan Reynolds began work on the Morris Sans family, a revised and extended Bank Gothic. The revised design includes lowercase letters, and redesigned letters %, ‰, Ø, §, ƒ, Ç. A base is also added to the numeral 1.
The font family comes in 3 weights and 2 widths. OpenType features include small caps, old style figures, proportional lining figures. It supporting ISO Adobe 2, Adobe CE, Latin extended Character sets.
Squarish Sans CT
Squarish Sans is a typeface under development as of June 2012. It was developed specifically to address the need of open-source software having access to this popular design, and is thus under the terms of the Open Font License. It was first publicly distributed, in a preliminary but very usable state, with Aleph One 1.0. It follows DeLuxe Gothic and Morris Sans in containing true lowercase characters, as well as small caps. While other cuts usually include only Latin and maybe Cyrillic characters, Squarish Sans offers Greek, Hebrew, and a large number of non-alphabetic (e.g. mathematical) symbols as well.
References
- Blackwell, Lewis. 20th Century Type. Yale University Press: 2004. ISBN 0-300-10073-6.
- Fiedl, Frederich, Nicholas Ott and Bernard Stein. Typography: An Encyclopedic Survey of Type Design and Techniques Through History. Black Dog & Leventhal: 1998. ISBN 1-57912-023-7.
- Jaspert, W. Pincus, W. Turner Berry and A.F. Johnson. The Encyclopedia of Type Faces. Blandford Press Lts.: 1953, 1983. ISBN 0-7137-1347-X.
External links
- The original squared sans, redrawn – Bank Gothic and Morris Sans
- FontHaus: Bank Gothic
- Morris Sans Font Family - by Dan Reynolds
- MyFonts: Bank Gothic