In her campaign, Hillary Clinton used New Baskerville, a serif used by book publishers, law firms, and universities, while John McCain used Optima, the same font used for the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. Observers of the primary and general elections compared Obama's design choices favorably to those made by his opponents. It has the sense of trustworthiness because you've seen it everywhere." Graphic designer Brian Collins noted that Gotham was the "linchpin" to Obama's entire campaign imagery. The International Herald Tribune praised the choice for its "potent, if unspoken, combination of contemporary sophistication (a nod to his suits) with nostalgia for America's past and a sense of duty." John Berry, an author of books on typography, agreed: "It's funny to see it used in a political campaign because on the one hand it's almost too ordinary yet that's the point. Later, however, upon hiring John Slabyk, and Scott Thomas, the campaign made the change to Gotham, and the font was used on numerous signs and posters for the campaign. The text is written in all-uppercase letters, which was criticized, as some wanted a mix of upper and lower-case to "give the words a human voice." In the Obama campaignĮarly materials for the Obama campaign used the serif Perpetua. In a Fourth of July speech at its unveiling, then-Governor George Pataki cited the cornerstone as the "bedrock of our state". Gotham was prominently featured in 2004 as the typeface on the cornerstone for the Freedom Tower at the World Trade Center site, itself owned by the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which also owns the bus terminal that inspired the typeface. I didn't think anything new could have been found there, but luckily for me (and the client), I was mistaken." On the Freedom Tower had already been thoroughly staked out and developed by past designers. "It's very American."Īccording to Frere-Jones, Gotham wouldn't have happened without the GQ commission. "Unlike other sans serif typefaces, it's not German, it's not French, it's not Swiss," he said. According to David Dunlap of The New York Times, Gotham "deliberately evokes the blocky no-nonsense, unselfconscious architectural lettering that dominated the streetscape from the 1930s through the 1960s." Andrew Romano of Newsweek concurs. Reviews of Gotham focus on its identity as something both American and specific to New York City. It was born outside the type design in some other world and has a very distinct flavor from that." It's the kind of letter an engineer would make. This simplification of type is characterized by Frere-Jones as "not the kind of letter a type designer would make. The lettering that inspired this typeface originated from the style of 1920s era sans-serifs like Futura, where "Type, like architecture, like the organization of society itself, was to be reduced to its bare, efficient essentials, rid of undesirable, local or ethnic elements." This theme was found frequently in Depression-era type in both North America and Europe, particularly Germany. It is also the current font to be used in title cards for film trailers in the US.ĭeveloped for professional use, Gotham is an extremely large family, featuring four widths, eight weights, and separate designs for screen display. The font has also been used as the cornerstone of the One World Trade Center, the tower built on the site of the former World Trade Center in New York. Since creation, Gotham has been highly visible due to its appearance in many notable places, including a large amount of campaign material created for Barack Obama's 2008 presidential campaign, and the 2016 federal election campaign of the Australian Labor Party. Gotham has a relatively broad design with a reasonably high x-height and wide apertures. Gotham's letterforms are inspired by a form of architectural signage that achieved popularity in the mid-twentieth century, and are especially popular throughout New York City. Gotham is a family of widely used geometric sans-serif digital typefaces designed by American type designer Tobias Frere-Jones in 2000.
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