![]() Portions copyright Microsoft Corporation. ITC Franklin Gothic is a trademark of The International Typeface Corporation which may be registered in certain jurisdictions. Franklin Gothic was named by Morris Fuller Benton in honor of Benjamin Franklin, whom Benton greatly admired for his significant contributions to American history and culture, and to printing in particular. This increased x-height ? which improved the typeface's appearance and readability ? and the availability of larger family made ITC Franklin Gothic a preferred choice when setting large blocks of sans serif text. Designed by Victor Caruso, these new designs matched the pure characteristics of the original Franklin Gothic, adhering closely to the subtle thick and thin pattern of the original ATF typeface while featuring a slightly enlarged lowercase x-height. In 1979, under license from ATF, International Typeface Corporation created four new weights ? Book, Medium, Demi and Heavy ? in roman and italic versions. ![]() For some unknown reason no light or intermediate weights were ever created. Over the next several years, the ATF family was expanded to include italic, condensed, condensed shaded, extra condensed and wide variants. This alternate character is available as an OpenType alternate when using software which supports OpenType features.Designed in 1904 by Morris Fuller Benton for the American Type Founders company, Franklin Gothic was originally conceived as only one weight. The MLC also included a second version of ‘W’ created by overlapping to ‘V’s. The alphabet was printed with no punctuation, and therefore all punctuation and characters have been created by the MLC, using existing versions as a guide. The MLC designed two extra weights, “Wide” which contains much broader geometry and near circular round letters like ‘O’ and ‘C’, and a “Regular” weight which is an exact average of the other two. The lower horizontal strokes on ‘E’, ‘L’, ‘Z’, and ‘2’ are unique to this style, and the long tail of ‘Q’ which drops very deep below the baseline is also a distinguishing characteristic. The version drawn for the book was a condensed Commercial Gothic, having a very narrow geometry, something not common among Commercial Gothic alphabets. Because many of the lettering styles included in the book were based on existing alphabets, it is unknown at this time if the Commercial Gothic was original in design or a derivative of another. The chapter on lettering was written and drawn by Mike Johns and Ricky Tichy of the Johns-Carabelli Co. This alphabet was printed in a series of lettering examples for the memorial industry in the 1982 American Monument Association book Symbols: The Universal Language. It also pairs well with modern or minimalist design, art deco design, and due to its simplicity works well when used as engaged or raised lettering. This style of letter should be used when legibility rather than beauty of form is most desired or needed. After it was printed as an example alphabet for the memorial industry in 1982, it was digitized in various monument design software including Craftech, Gerber Omega, and Monu-Cad. This alphabet was designed for sandblasting, but could easily be used for hand carved v-cut letters. All three weights are included in the download. For a sample character map see the MLC Font Project page. ![]() * Only the basic character set is shown here.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |