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Category | Wedge Serif |
---|---|
Designer(s) | Frederic W. Goudy |
Foundry | American Type Founders |
Date released | 1901 |
Re-issuing foundries | Linotype |
Copperplate Gothic is a typeface designed by Frederic W. Goudy and first produced by American Type Founders (ATF) beginning in 1901.
While termed a "Gothic" (another term for sans-serif), the face has small glyphic serifs that act to emphasize the blunt terminus of vertical and horizontal strokes. The typeface shows an unusual combination of influences; the glyphs are reminiscent of stone carving or lettering on copperplate engravings, the wide horizontal axis is typical of Victorian display types, yet the result is cleaner and leaves a crisp impression in letterpress or offset printing.
Goudy designed Copperplate Gothic in capitals only, since the design was intended to be used for headings and key words rather than for body text. It is not at all characteristic of Goudy's work, which is generally in the old-style serif genre. Goudy created it early in his career while in need of commissions, although he wrote in his 1946 autobiography that he "treasured" the drawings for their quality and noted that the design remained largely used. [1] It was developed on the initiative of ATF manager Clarence Marder while Goudy was living in Hingham, Massachusetts. ATF later cut other versions, such as bold styles, condensed and shaded styles, but never a lower case.
The typeface is often used in stationery, for social printing and business cards. It is also classically seen acid-etched into glass on the doors of law offices, banks and restaurants.
Master printer J. L. Frazier, no great fan of sans-serif types, wrote of it in 1925 that "a certain dignity of effect accompanies...due to the absence of anything in the way of frills," making it a popular choice for the stationery of professionals such as lawyers and doctors. [2] [a]
The typeface was used in the logo of the game show Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? and the Universal Pictures logo from 1990 and 1997 until 2012, as well as the Knowledge Adventure logo from 1993 to 1998. It was also used in the opening title sequence, end credits and on Paul Allen's business card in the 2000 film American Psycho . [3] The typeface was also used in the 1990s for Sega's second logo for the Sega Genesis and Sega CD, as well as the logos for the 32X, Game Gear, as well as their slogan at the time, "Welcome to the Next Level." It has also been used in the logo for the drum manufacturer Craviotto Drum Company since 2004.
It has been used for the Feature Program logo on Winnie the Pooh videos distributed by Walt Disney Home Video.
Between 2010 and 2019, the typeface was featured in the uniforms and branding of the Golden State Warriors, a basketball team in San Francisco. It is also used for the logo of the California-based rock band Cake.
In the TV series Future Man , the time-traveling character Wolf references Copperplate Gothic by name. In the year 1625 [4] he wanted to use the typeface for a pamphlet, and described it as "classic, timeless". [5]
In "Super Sunday", season 2 episode 13 of the TV series The Middle , Brick Heck pines over the typeface used in a news article about the Super Bowl. He tells his father Mike that the font used is Copperplate Gothic, stating that it is part of the sans serif typeface family, after which he did his signature whisper to himself "sans serif".
The general style of Copperplate Gothic is known as wedge-serif, due to the very narrow serifs pointing outwards, or as engraving faces due to the similarity with engraved letters. Copperplate Gothic's serifs, which are much less bold than the letters, are small by the standards of the genre. The wedge-serif style is sometimes called Latin, especially in Europe, and was quite popular there for much of the twentieth century. For example, Adrian Frutiger's early design Initiales Président (1952) was intended to be a French competitor; Frutiger in his autobiography noted that they were for makers of type "one of the safest investments. Smaller printers in particular had a steady demand for them." [6] [7] His later Méridien (also called Frutiger Serif) is a text face with some similarities, although this has more normal-sized serifs and a true lower-case. [8] [9]
In typography and lettering, a sans-serif, sans serif, gothic, or simply sans letterform is one that does not have extending features called "serifs" at the end of strokes. Sans-serif typefaces tend to have less stroke width variation than serif typefaces. They are often used to convey simplicity and modernity or minimalism. For the purposes of type classification, sans-serif designs are usually divided into these major groups: § Grotesque, § Neo-grotesque, § Geometric, § Humanist, and § Other or mixed.
In typography, a serif is a small line or stroke regularly attached to the end of a larger stroke in a letter or symbol within a particular font or family of fonts. A typeface or "font family" making use of serifs is called a serif typeface, and a typeface that does not include them is sans-serif. Some typography sources refer to sans-serif typefaces as "grotesque" or "Gothic" and serif typefaces as "roman".
A typeface is a design of letters, numbers and other symbols, to be used in printing or for electronic display. Most typefaces include variations in size, weight, slope, width, and so on. Each of these variations of the typeface is a font.
Frutiger is a series of typefaces named after its Swiss designer, Adrian Frutiger. Frutiger is a humanist sans-serif typeface, intended to be clear and highly legible at a distance or at small text sizes. A popular design worldwide, type designer Steve Matteson described its structure as "the best choice for legibility in pretty much any situation" at small text sizes, while Erik Spiekermann named it as "the best general typeface ever".
Univers is a sans-serif typeface family designed by Adrian Frutiger and released by his employer Deberny & Peignot in 1957. Classified as a neo-grotesque sans-serif, one based on the model of nineteenth-century German typefaces such as Akzidenz-Grotesk, it was notable for its availability from the moment of its launch in a comprehensive range of weights and widths. The original marketing for Univers deliberately referenced the periodic table to emphasise its scope.
Adrian Johann Frutiger was a Swiss typeface designer who influenced the direction of type design in the second half of the 20th century. His career spanned the hot metal, phototypesetting and digital typesetting eras. Until his death, he lived in Bremgarten bei Bern.
Frederic William Goudy was an American printer, artist and type designer whose typefaces include Copperplate Gothic, Goudy Old Style and Kennerley. He was one of the most prolific of American type designers and his self-named type continues to be one of the most popular in America.
Franklin Gothic and its related faces are a large family of sans-serif typefaces in the industrial or grotesque style developed in the early years of the 20th century by the type foundry American Type Founders (ATF) and credited to its head designer Morris Fuller Benton. "Gothic" was a contemporary term meaning sans-serif.
Oblique type is a form of type that slants slightly to the right, used for the same purposes as italic type. Unlike italic type, however, it does not use different glyph shapes; it uses the same glyphs as roman type, except slanted. Oblique and italic type are technical terms to distinguish between the two ways of creating slanted font styles; oblique designs may be labelled italic by companies selling fonts or by computer programs. Oblique designs may also be called slanted or sloped roman styles. Oblique fonts, as supplied by a font designer, may be simply slanted, but this is often not the case: many have slight corrections made to them to give curves more consistent widths, so they retain the proportions of counters and the thick-and-thin quality of strokes from the regular design.
In typography, a slab serif typeface is a type of serif typeface characterized by thick, block-like serifs. Serif terminals may be either blunt and angular (Rockwell), or rounded (Courier). Slab serifs were introduced in the early nineteenth century.
Didone is a genre of serif typeface that emerged in the late 18th century and was the standard style of general-purpose printing during the 19th century. It is characterized by:
Akzidenz-Grotesk is a sans-serif typeface family originally released by the Berthold Type Foundry of Berlin. "Akzidenz" indicates its intended use as a typeface for commercial print runs such as publicity, tickets and forms, as opposed to fine printing, and "grotesque" was a standard name for sans-serif typefaces at the time.
Goudy Old Style is an old-style serif typeface originally created by Frederic W. Goudy for American Type Founders (ATF) in 1915.
Sabon is an old-style serif typeface designed by the German-born typographer and designer Jan Tschichold (1902–1974) in the period 1964–1967. It was released jointly by the Linotype, Monotype, and Stempel type foundries in 1967. The design of the roman is based on types by Claude Garamond, particularly a specimen printed by the Frankfurt printer Konrad Berner. Berner had married the widow of a fellow printer Jacques Sabon, the source of the face's name, who had bought some of Garamond's type after his death. The italics are based on types designed by a contemporary of Garamond's, Robert Granjon. It is effectively a Garamond revival, though a different name was chosen as many other modern typefaces already carry this name.
News Gothic is a sans-serif typeface designed by Morris Fuller Benton, and was released in 1908 by his employer American Type Founders (ATF). The typeface is similar in proportion and structure to Franklin Gothic, also designed by Benton, but lighter.
Bank Gothic is a rectilinear geometric sans-serif typeface designed by Morris Fuller Benton for American Type Founders and released in 1930. The design has become popular from the late twentieth century to suggest a science-fiction, military, corporate, or sports aesthetic.
Trade Gothic is a sans-serif typeface designed in 1948 by Jackson Burke (1908–1975), who continued to work on further style-weight combinations, eventually 14 in all, until 1960, while he was director of type development for Linotype in the US. The family includes three weights and three widths.
Cloister is a serif typeface that was designed by Morris Fuller Benton and published by American Type Founders from around 1913. It is loosely based on the printing of Nicolas Jenson in Venice in the 1470s, in what is now called the "old style" of serif fonts. American Type Founders presented it as an attractive but highly usable serif typeface, suitable both for body text and display use.
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