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. 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. Their widths were more uniform and less classical, bowls were larger'. It was born outside the type design in some other world and has a very distinct flavor from that.' Paul Shaw commented that the letterforms Gotham was based on 'were geometric yet they did not look like Futura.

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. Having grown up here, I was always fond of the 'old' New York and its lettering.' 'I suppose there's a hidden personal agenda in the design,' Frere-Jones said, 'to preserve those old pieces of New York that could be wiped out before they're appreciated. įrere-Jones' inspiration for the typeface came from time spent walking block-by-block through Manhattan with a camera to find source material, and he based the font on the lettering seen in older buildings, especially the sign on the Eighth Avenue façade of the Port Authority Bus Terminal. GQ agreed that they needed something 'that was going to be very fresh and very established to have a sort of credible voice to it,' according to Hoefler. The Gotham typeface was initially commissioned by GQ magazine, whose editors wanted to display a sans-serif with a 'geometric structure' that would look 'masculine, new, and fresh' for their magazine.

and ViacomCBS, currently Paramount Global. ( Cartoon Network, Cartoon Network Productions, and Cartoon Network Studios), and formerly in the logos for Discovery, Inc. Companies that notably use the font are Taco Bell, Golf Galaxy, ABS-CBN Corporation ( ABS-CBN Entertainment, ABS-CBN News, ABS-CBN Sports, the television network of the same name, and some subsidiaries such as Star Magic), The Cartoon Network, Inc. It is published by Hoefler & Co., the company of Frere-Jones' former business partner Jonathan Hoefler. It is also the current font used in MPA title cards for film trailers in the U.S.ĭeveloped for professional use, Gotham is an extremely large family, featuring four widths, eight weights, and separate designs for screen display and a rounded version. The font has also been used on the cornerstone of the One World Trade Center in New York. This has included Barack Obama's 2008 presidential campaign, Michigan State University branding, and the 2016 federal election campaign of the Australian Labor Party. Since creation, Gotham has been highly visible due to its appearance in many notable places. Gotham has a relatively broad design with a reasonably high x-height and wide apertures.

Gotham's letterforms were inspired by examples of architectural signs of the mid-twentieth century.

Gotham is a geometric sans-serif typeface family designed by American type designer Tobias Frere-Jones with Jesse Ragan and released through the Hoefler & Frere-Jones foundry from 2000. Gotham Rounded, Gotham Condensed, Gotham Narrow, Gotham X-Narrow, Gotham Bold

Gotham1001 fonts