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Category | Sans-serif |
---|---|
Designer(s) | Aldo Novarese Alessandro Butti |
Foundry | Nebiolo (source), Linotype, URW |
Date released | 1952 |
Variations | Eurostile (Normal & Condensed variant) |
Microgramma is a sans-serif typeface which was designed by Aldo Novarese and Alessandro Butti for the Nebiolo Type Foundry in 1952. It became popular for use with technical illustrations in the 1960s and was a favourite of graphic designers by the early seventies, its uses ranging from publicity and publication design to packaging, largely because of its availability as a Letraset typeface. Early typesetters (like the AM Varityper) also incorporated it.
Novarese later developed Eurostile in 1962, (a normal and condensed typeface variant) very similar to Microgramma. Eurostile added lower-case letters, a bold condensed variant, and an ultra narrow design he called Eurostile Compact.
Microgramma is almost always used in its extended and bold extended forms (pictured). Initially, it was a titling font with only uppercase letters. Later versions, by Linotype and URW/Nebiolo, contain a lowercase as well, making it functionally identical to Eurostile. These digital versions also include accented Latin characters, mathematical symbols, and Latin ligatures. In the URW/Nebiolo version, there are also extended Latin, subscripts and superscripts, and extended Latin ligatures.
Microgramma OnlyShadow is a variant of Microgramma Bold that contains only the shadows of Microgramma Extended Bold, designed by URW Studio and Aldo Novarese in 1994. Although Alessandro Butti died in 1959, URW credited him as the designer of the new font.
The Euro sign in the font has a different weight, styled from a different font family, and is not shadowed.
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Science fiction films and TV programmes quickly started using the typeface. A number of Gerry Anderson productions in the mid/late-1960s applied the Microgramma font decals to the featured futuristic vehicles.
Microgramma and its related variations are used throughout the original Alien franchise films, as well as the more recent reincarnations. Weyland-Yutani, the primary corporate conglomerate within both the earlier and recent Alien films (including the recent genre crossover Alien vs. Predator franchise films), features use of Microgamma and its Bold Extended typeface in its corporate logo, although not exclusively.
The Microgramma Bold Extended typeface was used extensively in the Star Trek universe, such as Franz Joseph's The Star Trek Star Fleet Technical Manual. [1] The font, in both its original and various altered forms, was incorporated into numerous displays and on ship exteriors in six of the Star Trek motion pictures, as well as depictions of "earlier technology" display screens, particularly for the Enterprise "prequel" series, during the four later television series.
A modified version of Microgramma Bold Extended (sometimes called Starfleet Bold Extended) was used for the main hull registry number for Starfleet ships beginning with Star Trek: The Motion Picture in 1979. Some characters were modified, and all characters have red piping outlining them.
Following the 2016 WWE Brand Extension Draft and WWE Battleground 2016, WWE Raw unveiled a new logo which used Microgramma font, as did all title cards and graphics. The following night, WWE SmackDown Live also unveiled a new logo - although it did not use Microgramma, all title cards and graphics did.
According to MasGrafx Racing Graphics, Microgramma is the font of several NASCAR numbers used by Richard Childress Racing and Dale Earnhardt, Inc., such as the #8 (mainly driven by Dale Earnhardt Jr. until 2007), #3 (Dale Earnhardt and Austin Dillon) and #29 (Kevin Harvick). Some of these are in italics. Red Bull Racing also uses the font for their driver numbers in Formula 1.
Microgramma was also the logo font used by Alienware computers until 2016.
Polish "Central Anticorruption Bureau" (Centralne Biuro Antykorupcyjne) use font in logo and uniforms. In short: "CBA" in uniforms workers and officers.
Optima is a humanist sans-serif typeface designed by Hermann Zapf and released by the D. Stempel AG foundry, Frankfurt, West Germany in 1958.
Futura is a geometric sans-serif typeface designed by Paul Renner and released in 1927. It was designed as a contribution on the New Frankfurt-project. It is based on geometric shapes, especially the circle, similar in spirit to the Bauhaus design style of the period. It was developed as a typeface by the Bauer Type Foundry, in competition with Ludwig & Mayer's seminal Erbar typeface of 1926.
Raymond Larabie is a Canadian designer of TrueType and OpenType computer fonts. He owns Typodermic Fonts type foundry, which distributes both commercially licensed and shareware/freeware fonts.
Eras is a humanist sans-serif typeface designed by Albert Boton and Albert Hollenstein and was released by the International Typeface Corporation (ITC) in 1976. Eras is licensed by the Linotype type foundry.
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.
Aldo Novarese was an Italian type designer who lived and worked mostly in Turin.
Cooper Black is an ultra-bold serif typeface intended for display use that was designed by Oswald Bruce Cooper and released by the Barnhart Brothers & Spindler type foundry in 1922. The typeface was drawn as an extra-bold weight of Cooper's "Cooper Old Style" family. It rapidly became a standard typeface and was licensed by American Type Founders and also copied by many other manufacturers of printing systems.
Eurostile is a geometric sans-serif typeface designed by Aldo Novarese in 1962. Novarese created Eurostile for one of the best-known Italian foundries, Nebiolo, in Turin.
Clarendon is the name of a slab serif typeface that was released in 1845 by Thorowgood and Co. of London, a letter foundry often known as the Fann Street Foundry. The original Clarendon design is credited to Robert Besley, a partner in the foundry, and was originally engraved by punchcutter Benjamin Fox, who may also have contributed to its design. Many copies, adaptations and revivals have been released, becoming almost an entire genre of type design.
Rotis is a typeface developed in 1988 by Otl Aicher, a German graphic designer and typographer. In Rotis, Aicher explores an attempt at maximum legibility through a highly unified yet varied typeface family that ranges from full serif, glyphic, and sans-serif. The four basic Rotis variants are:
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.
ITC Benguiat is a decorative serif typeface designed by Ed Benguiat and released by the International Typeface Corporation (ITC) in 1977. The face is loosely based upon typefaces of the Art Nouveau period but is not considered an academic revival. The face follows ITC's design formulary of an extremely high x-height, combined with multiple widths and weights.
ITC Avant Garde Gothic is a geometric sans serif font family based on the logo font used in the Avant Garde magazine. Herb Lubalin devised the logo concept and its companion headline typeface, and then he and Tom Carnase, a partner in Lubalin's design firm, worked together to transform the idea into a full-fledged typeface.
Stencil refers to two typefaces released within months of each other in 1937. The face created by R. Hunter Middleton for Ludlow was advertised in June, while Gerry Powell's version for American Type Founders appeared one month later. Both fonts consist of only capital letters with rounded edges and thick main strokes, much like a Clarendon typeface, except with breaks in the face to give it the appearance of the stenciled alphabets used on boxes and crates. Powell's exploration of Stencil became very popular over time and is still used today.
Handel Gothic is a geometric sans-serif typeface designed in 1965 by Donald J. Handel (1936–2002), who worked for the graphic designer Saul Bass.
The Bauhaus typeface design is based on Herbert Bayer's 1925 experimental Universal typeface and the Bauhaus aesthetic overall.
Neo Sans and Neo Tech are the typefaces designed by the British type designer Sebastian "Seb" Lester. The typefaces were released by Monotype Corporation on April 19, 2004. The design concept called for a versatile, futuristic typeface that didn't look "crude, gimmicky or ephemeral".
Ubuntu is an OpenType-based font family, designed to be a modern, humanist-style typeface by London-based type foundry Dalton Maag, with funding by Canonical Ltd. The font was under development for nearly nine months, with only a limited initial release through a beta program, until September 2010. It was then that it became the new default font of the Ubuntu operating system in Ubuntu 10.10. Its designers include Vincent Connare, creator of the Comic Sans and Trebuchet MS fonts.
Semplicità is a sans-serif typeface of the geometric style. It was published by the Nebiolo type foundry of Turin, Italy from around 1928.
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