{"id":525,"date":"2020-10-25T04:47:59","date_gmt":"2020-10-25T11:47:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cba-design.com\/united-states\/2020\/10\/25\/from-batman-to-obama-how-a-humble-font-found-fame\/"},"modified":"2021-11-01T14:43:09","modified_gmt":"2021-11-01T18:43:09","slug":"design-tools-gotham","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cba-design.com\/united-states\/news\/design-tools-gotham\/","title":{"rendered":"001 Design Tools, From Batman to Obama: How a Humble Font Found Fame"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t
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New York has a string of iconic references to its name. It\u2019s known as \u2018the city that never sleeps and for being \u2018so good they named it twice,\u2019 for a start. <\/p>

It’s a city that\u2019s inspired the imaginations of many, never more so than as the fictional metropolis where Batman\u2019s adventures were set. Gotham City is a \u2018fantasy transposition\u2019 of Manhattan, despite nobody ever saying so explicitly, often taking on the identity of the city\u2019s noirish side.
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Bill Finger, a co-creator of Batman, wrote many of the superhero\u2019s adventures. He\u2019d been drawn to an entry in the phone book for Gotham Jewelers. The name Gotham, he felt, was a fit for his fantasy city. Little did we know that it actually dates back to medieval England when it meant \u2018goat\u2019s town.\u2019<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t

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Holy Hoefler!<\/h2>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t
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Typeface designer Tobias Frere-Jones, a partner with Hoefler & Co at the time, chose Gotham as the name for the sans serif font he created in 2000. <\/p>

It was GQ who had actually commissioned this new font. The magazine was looking for a linear typeface with a geometric structure. Something \u2019masculine, new and fresh\u2019 was the order of the day. This, it believed, would bring authority and credibility to its published articles.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t

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Putting the Pow! Bam! and Zap! into Gotham<\/h2>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t
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To capture the essence of Manhattan, Tobias had spent hours taking thousands of photos around the city. He focused on signs from the mid-20th century. He wanted to capture the freethinking spirit found in architecture and urban planning during those years.
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It was signage on the Eighth Avenue fa\u00e7ade of the Port Authority Bus Terminal<\/a> that caught his eye and captured his imagination. He summed up its simplicity when he said, \u2018They are letters that only an engineer could have come up with. The fact that they were born outside a typography environment gives them a very distinctive flavor.\u2019<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t

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\u2018Solid, Concrete and Functional\u2019<\/h2>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t
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The Gotham characters encapsulate the minimalist philosophy which inspired them. Initially there were 44 weight variants. Now there are 66. No room here for anything silly or nonsensical, Gotham is solid, concrete and functional. At the same time it\u2019s an accessible typeface. <\/p>

The description on the Hoefler & Co website<\/a> is quite clear about all this. \u2018From the letters that inspired it,\u2019 it says, \u2018Gotham has inherited an honest tone that is assertive but never imposing, friendly but never crazy, confident but never aloof.\u2019
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Among its most striking features are the circular shape of many of the letters and the very limited ascender and descender heights.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t

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Gotham Finds Fame<\/h2>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t
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A few years after its birth and once the exclusive rights reserved by GQ had expired, more and more people began using Gotham. The Freedom Tower, the World Trade Center, and the National September 11 Memorial & Museum all chose it as their main character.
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However, it was in 2008 that Gotham found true fame. The then American presidential candidate, Barack Obama, selected it as the official character for his candidacy.<\/p>

Gotham, with its simple and incisive look, was a natural match for the clear and direct messages he wanted to get across. These included, \u2019YES WE CAN\u2019, \u2018CHANGE\u2019 and \u2018HOPE.\u2019 Graphic designer Brian Collins<\/a> described Gotham as the \u2018linchpin\u2019 to the former President\u2019s entire campaign imagery.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t

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Gotham Morphs into Obama<\/h2>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t
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The \u2019Obama character\u2019 has become popular not only in the United States but throughout the world. It\u2019s used by Coca Cola, Netflix, Saturday Live Night, Turkish Airlines, DC Comics and the Tribeca Film Festival, to name but a few.
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It\u2019s even popular in the world of cinema, proudly standing out on the posters of countless blockbusters.
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Four years after the first campaign, Barack Obama decided to use Gotham again for the 2012 midterm elections. This time serifs were added to \u2018improve\u2019 the typeface. When asked about how all this came about, Frere-Jones and Hoefler delighted by responding in words used in the Obama campaign,
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I want to thank Giuseppe Mascia who\u2019s based in Milan with CBA, Italy for writing this article. I hope you enjoyed discovering more about the Gotham typeface. Thank you for reading and I look forward to sharing a new and inspiring topic with you all next month!<\/em><\/strong><\/p>

Rutger, Executive Creative Director<\/strong><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"tags":[],"blog_categorie":[43],"class_list":["post-525","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","blog_categorie-news"],"acf":[],"lang":"en","translations":{"en":525},"pll_sync_post":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cba-design.com\/united-states\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/525","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cba-design.com\/united-states\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cba-design.com\/united-states\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cba-design.com\/united-states\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cba-design.com\/united-states\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=525"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/cba-design.com\/united-states\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/525\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8037,"href":"https:\/\/cba-design.com\/united-states\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/525\/revisions\/8037"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cba-design.com\/united-states\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=525"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cba-design.com\/united-states\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=525"},{"taxonomy":"blog_categorie","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cba-design.com\/united-states\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/blog_categorie?post=525"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}