life in gotham city
Here is the exploration of the Gotham typeface…very clean, and as the foundry describes it, very “practical”, with an engineer, draftsman-like bent. Found an interesting article in the NYTimes about the use of Gotham for the cornerstone of the Freedom Tower, and that despite Gotham’s intent to be neutral and just “Gotham,” its choice for this purpose at least, is anything but.
The choice of Gotham is more than a matter of typographical arcana (though as typographical arcana go, it’s not bad). As the first tangible element of the Freedom Tower – and, by extension, the trade center redevelopment – and as an image seen nationwide on Independence Day, the cornerstone sent an aesthetic signal of intent.
And despite the font being the poster-child during the last Obama political campaign, I had to say I kinda dug it, especially the Gotham condensed. I could see it being integrated into an urban environment without too much trouble.
Did a quick search of my fonts, and lo and behold…I don’t have it. Next question, how do I get it? Do I pay the $299 that the foundry HF+J charges for one computer? Last I checked, I was on a grad-student/thrift-store budget. Now what?
I might not completely outline my strategy from here on out but here at least are some fun typography sources:
- www.dafont.com
- www.typeneu.com
- http://www.neo2.es/blog/category/typography/
Next on the agenda is venerable Matthew Carter, a type designer who founded several type foundries and responsible for many of the font faces found on the web: verdana, tahoma, georgia, etc. First reaction being, ugh, I hate Verdana and Tahoma, not realizing of course that I’m using verdana on my own blog. I switched it to Helvetica to see the difference and it just screamed Helvetica to me in a way that was distracting.
the original
with helvetica
arial anyone?
http://www.will-harris.com/verdana-georgia.htm
