July 8, 2004
Gotham, The Typeface
Very cool article in the NY Times today about the Gotham typeface, which was inspired by simple sans-serif types seen everywhere in the city, and the young typeface was chosed for the cornerstone for the World Trade Center. It was developed by Tobias Frere-Jones at Hoefler Type Foundry, who didn't even know that the typeface had been used for the cornerstone until getting an email from a client and then seeing pictures of it on the Times website (which the article delights in reporting, we think). We liked these comments about the typeface:
Michael Gericke, a partner in the Pentagram studio, which designed the cornerstone with Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, the architects of the Freedom Tower, said Gotham "didn't look like something that was created yesterday and would be gone tomorrow."Some samples of the typeface can be found here at the Hoefler-and-Frere-Jones website, plus here are some interview with Frere-Jones from Typotheque and The Morning News. And is Tobias any relation to music critic Sasha Frere-Jones? Hmm...
"It seems like it's part of the larger urban environment," he said. "It seems, in a way, that it's always been there."
Another Pentagram partner, Michael Bierut, likened Gotham to the Manhattan street grid. "It doesn't show individual authorship," he said, "but it shows a character you wouldn't find anywhere else."
|
Advertisement: Gothamist Continues Below!
Post a comment (Comment Policy)
$200 for a font? Yikes! I'll stick with Arial.
(Although I have to say, their selection is pretty nice... if I had money that I didn't know what to do with, I'd plunk a few dollars down for them...)
Personally, I'm a Heletica Neue man myself. As a designer, I think a well-designed font (with proper kerning, ligatures, special characters, prints well at any size, etc) is definitely worth $200. I wouldn't pay that much for every font, but for ones you'll use a lot it's worth it. It's a skill to create a nice font family and it shows when the font designer actually knows what he/she is doing -- as opposed to the majority of the amateur fonts available free online.
yes, brothers.
But most importantly, where can one download it in True Type?
Hoefler, of course, is a fellow alum of Hunter College High School. Just another genius from the Brick Prison...
$200 (and that's for 8 fonts at varying weights, not just 1) is a total steal, if you ask me. There are tons of cruddy, half-assed fonts online going for $20 a pop; Gotham is a real work of art.
I really like the cornerstone, even if that last line is pushing the limits of cheesy Bush-ness.
sasha and tobias are brothers
Yeah Hunter! That's what's up!
oh my gawd, I thought I was the only one that paid attention to fonts. I'm not alone!
Jenny, your party is waiting for you at Typophile and Typographica.
Gotham is indeed magnificent. I'm proud to have a license for it.
Gotham is an absolulty beautiful font.
I'm sure it will be worth every penny. However...
if you're looking for something similar
and dont want to pay, look for Avenir on
dafont.com It looks almost identical to
the Gotham font with a few exceptions.
Hope this helps :)
I find that geo sans light font from dafont.com
looks similar. And it's free!!enjoy