FUTURA

German designer Paul Renner designed the sans-serif typeface Futura in 1928. It was originally manufactured by the Bauer Type Foundry in Frankfurt, and is considered to be one of the most famous of the geometric san-serif types. Even after 80 years since its first publication, the Futura family is still being used in contemporary design. Its perpetual application may be due the monotone flow and very geometric style.

This geometric form can be especially noticed in the ‘O’, ‘Q’, and ‘C’ letters, as they resemble almost perfect circles. In keeping with this flow of simplicity and balance, other shapes such as the triangle and square are dominant in many of the angular letters. The sharp apexes and recognisable shapes makes Futura a great display type, as the eye is easily able to distinguish between the letters. With long ascenders and descenders in the lowercase letters, the ‘i’ and ‘j’ can sometimes be mistaken, which makes it difficult to read small set Futura for long periods of time. However, the slight tapered curves give the lines a smooth connection point. This optically allows for the letters to appear ‘lighter’ on the page, creating a more pleasant read.

Futura can be described as a typeface of its time, as the almost perfect geometric shapes were clean, sharp and radically different. Word had spread in Europe, and soon after many American type foundries had began creating Futura look-alikes in order to keep up with Renner’s success. Typefaces such as ‘Metro’ by William Dwiggins, and ‘Spartan’ by American Typefounders were just some of the competitors tying to contend during the 1930’s. At the same time, other designers were inspired by Renner’s geometric philosophy and began creating slab serif typefaces. These included ‘Beton’ in 1931, and ‘Rockwell’ in 1934.

The harmonious marriage of curved and straight lines used in Futura create a contrasting alphabet that allows each letter to be distinguished from the next when read. This pure type has had great use in children’s novels and in primary education. When used as a display font, the sharper letters such as ‘M’, ‘N’ and ‘W’ have extra long apexes. These extrusions stand above and below the cap height, which visually presents the type as modern and cutting edge. It is subtle features like these that make Futura an everlasting choice for designers.

Over the years the Futura family has grown with many additions such as the bold and oblique fonts in 1930, extra bold and extra bold oblique in 1936, and finally the light and light oblique versions released in 1950. Its large family and neutral tone have allowed for many applications including the historic moon landing in 1969, where Futura was used on the commemorative plaque. The typeface has also been used in many movies such as ‘V for Vendetta’, and has been adopted by companies such as Volkswagen and Sesame Street.

There are many popular typefaces that resemble the geometric ideals that Renner created back in 1928. Fonts such as Helvetica and Verdana carry similar qualities that bring a slightly more modern feel to the page. However, in saying this, Futura is still an exciting typeface that matches up to many of these more modern san-serifs that we see today.

References:

1: C Perfect, The Complete Typographer ‘A manual for designing with type’. Little, Brown and Company, Great Britain, 1992.

2: M Klein, Type and Typographers. Architecture Design and Technology Press, Great Britain, 1991.

3: M Solomon, The Art of Typography. Watson-Guptill Publications, New York, 1986.

4: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Futura_(typeface)

5: http://weareall.analogue.ca/category/typography/page/3/