Gotham is the first typeface Frere-Jones designed exclusively for the Hoefler Type Foundry and its release marks his return to New York City. But by focusing on the mundane-even decrepit-corners of his environment with Gotham, Frere-Jones has created a typeface that carries with it the disorienting bustle of a walk in the city-the sense of being engulfed by a history that remains just out of reach. It took an intimate knowledge of the city to see the formal and historical connections between these varied letterforms, but also a humble respect for metropolitan history to focus on such an unglamorous aspect of New York.įortunately for New Yorkers, Frere-Jones has had the opportunity to work on projects for some of the city’s more celebrated institutions: he and HTF principal Jonathan Hoefler have designed typefaces for Grand Central Terminal, Lever House, the Guggenheim Museum, the Whitney Museum, the Wall Street Journal, and Radio City Music Hall, among others. Gotham was inspired by a variety of unassuming, often derelict signs originally carved, painted, rendered in neon, and cast in steel or bronze on the facades of buildings throughout New York. In fact, he has undertaken the task of ‘documenting anything extant and noteworthy’ in Manhattan. With these typefaces Frere-Jones preserves the humble letters that inspire them and creates type that resonates with life outside of typography and graphic design.Ī native New Yorker, Frere-Jones’s work is as connected to his hometown as the name of his latest design. There he designed typefaces in every style, but continued his exploration of vernacular lettering with Interstate and another typeface, Pilsner, based on a French beer label. After graduating, Frere-Jones joined the digital type-foundry Font Bureau who had already released Garage Gothic. This interest began while he was a student at the Rhode Island School of Design where he designed the typeface Garage Gothic based on the typography of parking garage tickets. It is the most prominent result of the designer’s continuing interest in what he calls working class lettering. Despite the specificity of its origins, Interstate was embraced universally by graphic designers and has been used on most everything, including the 2000 U.S. First released in 1994, Interstate was based loosely on the font family Highway Gothic, used by the United States Federal Highway Administration for road signs. Inspired by post-war building signage in New York City, Gotham brings together two themes in the work of its designer: working class letterforms and the typographic heritage of New York City.įrere-Jones is perhaps best known as the designer of Interstate, another sans serif typeface with industrial roots. □ Web Licensepermitting installation on a server for embedding fonts via CSS in website designs.Earlier this summer, Hoefler Type Foundry released Gotham, a new typeface designed by Tobias Frere-Jones. □ Desktop Licensea standard license for creating personal/commercial art, documents, and graphics. To order Texas Hero, choose a license and “Add” to your shopping basket. * OpenType features include standard and historical ligatures, contextual alternates, lining and old-style figures, and full Latin support. Released in 1994, Texas Hero is, as far as we know, the first authentic simulation of historical penmanship.* $39 | Order Rusk’s penmanship caught my eye as the most accessible of the bunch. She made copies of the letters of some famous TexansHouston, Austin, Travis, Rusk. Conveniently, my mother was then working at the Center for American History at The University of Texas at Austin, my hometown. It occurred to me years ago that the graphic arts community might find useful a digital typeface that mimicked the classic look of nineteenth-century handwriting.
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