News Gothic

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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.

News Gothic No. 2

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.

Variants

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.

Jcpenney commissioned an extenstion of two new weights for use in advertising campaigns.[3]

Adobe Systems Source Sans Pro[4] is based on the American Type Founders Company version of News Gothic displayed in their 1923 type specimen catalog. Font family includes six weights, from extra-light to black, in upright and italic styles. Released in 2012 as Adobe's first open source font.

Usages

  • The identity for the Brooklyn Academy of Music, designed by Michael Bierut, heavily uses News Gothic.
  • The font on black Otis elevator pushbuttons (manufactured from the 1920s through the 1960s) and the rounded Otis Lexan touch-sensitive buttons (manufactured from the 1960s through the 1980s) primarily uses News Gothic, while the font on the squared Otis Lexan touch-sensitive buttons (manufactured from the 1960s through the 1980s) uses News Gothic Demi Bold.
  • The text in figures of the scientific general Nature Magazine is set in News Gothic.
  • The bold variant of News Gothic is used in the logo for the Swedish pop group ABBA, a logo conceived in 1976 by Rune Söderqvist. It should also be noted that the scanning used for the logo comes from Adobe, not Monotype.[5] The font is/was also used in promotional materials for the group, as well as CD and DVD liner notes.
  • News Gothic Bold is also used in the artwork for The Fame Monster by Lady Gaga, possibly in a deliberate stylistic homage to ABBA.
  • The numbers on split-flap displays on most 1970s Bob Stewart Productions game shows were News Gothic Bold.
  • News Gothic Bold was used in Saul Bass' opening title sequence for Alfred Hitchcock's 1960 thriller, Psycho.
  • News Gothic Bold was used in the Star Wars opening crawl for the main body of the text.
  • The version of News Gothic which was on IBM typesetters was used widely by Fluxus artists such as George Maciunas (in his Fluxpublications) and George Brecht (in his event scores)[6][7]
  • The logo adopted by Polaroid Corporation in the late 1950s, designed by Paul Giambarba, is set in News Gothic, as was much of the type on the company's packaging and documentation up until the 1980s.
  • The Style Network uses the News Gothic typeface in its on-air identity along with a bold weight of the Didot typeface.

Bibliography

  • Baines, Phil, Hastam, Andrew. Type and Typography. Watson-Guptill Publications: 2005. ISBN 0-8230-5528-0.
  • 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 Encyclopædia of Type Faces. Blandford Press Lts.: 1953, 1983. ISBN 0-7137-1347-X.
  • Macmillan, Neil. An A–Z of Type Designers. Yale University Press: 2006. ISBN 0-300-11151-7.
  • Meggs, Phillip B. Revival of the Fittest. RC Publications, Inc: 2002. ISBN 1-883915-08-2.

References

  1. ↑ Professionals in Print
  2. ↑ (x) negative sans serif text - News Gothic {Chesh}
  3. ↑ JCP News Gothics
  4. ↑ (x) Adobe’s first open source type family
  5. ↑ hem.bredband.net/b138451/logo/
  6. ↑ www.amazon-noir.com/BOOKS/6_%20The_Fluxus_Reader_Ken_Friedman.pdf
  7. ↑ ubu.clc.wvu.edu/historical/gb/index.html

External links

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