Benton Sans is a digital typeface family begun by

Tobias Frere-Jones Tobias Frere-Jones (born Tobias Edgar Mallory Jones; August 28, 1970) is an American type designer who works in New York City. He operates the company Frere-Jones Type and teaches typeface design at the Yale School of Art MFA program. Among his ty ...

in 1995, and expanded by

Cyrus Highsmith Cyrus Highsmith (born 1973) is an American typeface designer, illustrator, and author. After graduating from the Rhode Island School of Design in 1997, he worked at Font Bureau in Boston as Senior Type Designer until founding his own type foundry, ...

Font Bureau The Font Bureau, Inc. or Font Bureau is a digital type foundry based in Boston, Massachusetts, United States. The foundry is one of the leading designers of typefaces, specializing in type designs for magazine and newspaper publishers. History ...

. It is based on the sans-serif typefaces designed for

American Type Founders American Type Founders (ATF) Co. was a business trust created in 1892 by the merger of 23 type foundries, representing about 85% of all type manufactured in the United States. De Vinne, Theodore Low, ''The Practice of Typography,'' Century Comp ...

Morris Fuller Benton Morris Fuller Benton (November 30, 1872 – June 30, 1948) was an American typeface designer who headed the design department of the American Type Founders (ATF), for which he was the chief type designer from 1900 to 1937. Many of Benton's ...

around the beginning of the twentieth century in the industrial or grotesque style. It was a reworked version of Benton Gothic developed for various corporate customers, under Frere-Jones's guidance. In developing the typeface, Frere-Jones studied drawings of Morris Fuller Benton's 1908 typeface

News Gothic News Gothic is a sans-serif typeface in the grotesque or industrial style. It was designed by Morris Fuller Benton and released in 1908 by his employer American Type Founders (ATF). News Gothic is similar in proportion and structure to Franklin ...

at the

Smithsonian Institution The Smithsonian Institution ( ), or simply the Smithsonian, is a group of museums and education and research centers, the largest such complex in the world, created by the U.S. government "for the increase and diffusion of knowledge". Founded ...

. The typeface began as a proprietary type, initially titled MSL Gothic, for

Martha Stewart Living ''Martha Stewart Living'' is a magazine and former television program Television, sometimes shortened to TV, is a telecommunication medium for transmitting moving images and sound. The term can refer to a television set, or the medium of ...

magazine and the website for

Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia Inc. (MSLO) is a diversified media and merchandising company founded by Martha Stewart and owned by Marquee Brands LLC since April 2019. It is organized into four business segments: publishing, Internet, broadcasti ...

. As Benton Gothic, there are 7 weights from Thin to Black and only 2 widths. When working for retail version of the font, the family was harmonized and given the new name called Benton Sans. In 2002-2003, Cyrus Highsmith added additional widths, weights, and italics to the typeface family, and the face was released for public use under the name Benton Sans. The extra weight and widths also served as optically-corrected replacements for

Franklin Gothic Franklin Gothic and its related faces are a large family of sans-serif typefaces in the industrial or grotesque style developed in the early years of the 20th century by the type foundry American Type Founders (ATF) and credited to its head desi ...

, Alternate Gothic, Lightline Gothic. Like News Gothic, Benton Sans follows the grotesque model. Distinct characters are the two-story lowercase a, the two-story lowercase g, and a blunt terminus at the apex of the lowercase t. The tail of the uppercase Q is distinct for being located completely outside the bowl. The character set is compact, and descenders are shallow. The typeface differs from other grotesque sans-serifs in its organic shapes and subtle transitions of stroke width, all contributing to a less severe, humanist tone of voice. Benton Sans has a wider, less compact character set than News Gothic. The typeface includes

text figures Text figures (also known as non-lining, lowercase, old style, ranging, hanging, medieval, billing, or antique figures or numerals) are numerals designed with varying heights in a fashion that resembles a typical line of running text, hence the ...

(old style figures) providing a refinement not available in News Gothic. Benton Sans font family originally consists of 26 fonts in 8 weights, and 4 widths for all but Extra Light and Thin families, which only include the widest width. On December 18, 2008, The Font Bureau Inc. announced the expansion of the font family. The expanded family has 128 fonts in 8 weights, and 4 widths for all weights, with complementary italic and small caps.

Benton Sans RE (2010)

It is a version of Benton Sans font designed by David Berlow for screen use between 9 and 18 pixels. Changes include exaggerate the glyph features, larger clearances between letter features, reduced stroke contrasts, wider and more open letterforms with increased letter spacing, larger x-heights, shortened ascenders and descenders. Other changes include 1-storey small g, addition of lower right tail in small a, truncation of vertical stem in cedilla, stretched top hook in small f, linked f bar to dotless i in fi ligature (), semicircular O in capital OE ligature (Œ), small numeral 1 without bottom bar, 2-storey a in @, diagonal stem and leaned hooks in integral sign (∫), addition of lower left ball serif in small Greek mu and micro signs (μ), addition of lower right tail in small Greek pi (π), downward left hook in square root sign (√), wedged acute and grave diacritical marks, circular dots in commas, quotation marks, exclamation marks, question marks, decimal point, division sign; stretched upper tail in partial differential sign (∂), wedged quotation marks in primes and back quote marks, smaller angle brackets in angle bracket marks, sharper lower tip in single dagger mark, sharper tips in asterisk, elimination of loop in pound currency sign (£), vertical stem in cent currency sign (¢), separation of plus and minus signs in plus-minus sign (±). The font family includes 4 fonts in 2 weights (regular, bold) and 1 width (between normal and extended width), with complementary italic.

Benton Sans Wide (2013)

On August 7, 2013, The Font Bureau Inc. announced the expansion of the Benton Sans font family, which included the addition of Wide width fonts to Benton Sans font family. In addition, small caps and figure styles, extended Latin character set, language support are included in all Benton Sans fonts. The updated Benton Sans font family includes 80 fonts in 5 widths and 8 weights, with complementary italic.

Usage examples

Corporate branding

*Benton Sans is used in BostonGlobe.com for supplemental heads and section titles. * Primary font used in

The Walt Disney Company The Walt Disney Company, commonly known as Disney (), is an American multinational mass media and entertainment conglomerate headquartered at the Walt Disney Studios complex in Burbank, California. Disney was originally founded on October ...

corporate logo since 2012 * Primary font used in

SAP Sap is a fluid transported in xylem cells (vessel elements or tracheids) or phloem sieve tube elements of a plant. These cells transport water and nutrients throughout the plant. Sap is distinct from latex, resin, or cell sap; it is a separa ...

website and documents * Primary font used in

frog design frog (styled as ''"frog, part of Capgemini Invent"'') is a global creative and design consultancy founded in 1969 by industrial designer Hartmut Esslinger in Mutlangen, Germany, where it was initially named “esslinger design”. Soon after the ...

documents * Primary font used in

IA Collaborative IA, Ia, or ia may refer to: Arts and entertainment * ''Ia'', an 1892 novelette by Arthur Quiller-Couch * "Iä", a fictional word in the works of H. P. Lovecraft * International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees (IATSE), which also goes by ...

documents * Primary font used in 2013 Myspace redesign * Primary font of

Indiana University Indiana University (IU) is a system of public universities in the U.S. state of Indiana. Campuses Indiana University has two core campuses, five regional campuses, and two regional centers under the administration of IUPUI. *Indiana Universit ...

, along with Georgia Pro and

Salvo Serif A salvo is the simultaneous discharge of artillery or firearms including the firing of guns either to hit a target or to perform a salute. As a tactic in warfare, the intent is to cripple an enemy in one blow and prevent them from fighting b ...

* Primary font of Western University and its

Ivey Business School Ivey Business School is a constituent unit of the University of Western Ontario, located in London, Ontario, Canada. Ivey offers full-time undergraduate (HBA), MBA, MSc, MFE and PhD programs and also maintains two teaching facilities in Toronto ...

* Primary font used by

Heroku Heroku is a cloud platform as a service (PaaS) supporting several programming languages. One of the first cloud platforms, Heroku has been in development since June 2007, when it supported only the Ruby programming language, but now supports Java, ...

* Font of

Marvel Comics Marvel Comics is an American comic book publishing, publisher and the flagship property of Marvel Entertainment, a divsion of The Walt Disney Company since September 1, 2009. Evolving from Timely Comics in 1939, ''Magazine Management/Atlas Co ...

logo * Font of

The University of Texas at Austin The University of Texas at Austin (UT Austin, UT, or Texas) is a public research university in Austin, Texas. It was founded in 1883 and is the oldest institution in the University of Texas System. With 40,916 undergraduate students, 11,075 ...

for print publications * On-screen graphics font of

Formula One Formula One (also known as Formula 1 or F1) is the highest class of international racing for open-wheel single-seater formula racing cars sanctioned by the Fédération Internationale de l'Automobile (FIA). The World Drivers' Championship, ...

television coverage from 2015 to 2017 * Font of

Lonely Planet Lonely Planet is a travel guide book publisher. Founded in Australia in 1973, the company has printed over 150 million books. History Early years Lonely Planet was founded by married couple Maureen and Tony Wheeler. In 1972, they embarked ...

's book covers * On-screen graphics font for the

FIA Formula 2 Championship The FIA Formula 2 Championship is a second-tier single-seater championship organised by the Fédération Internationale de l'Automobile (FIA). Held on racing circuits, the championship was introduced in 2017, following the rebranding of the lo ...

from 2017 to the 2018 Silverstone round * On-screen graphics font for the

GP3 Series The GP3 Series, or GP3 for short, was a single-seater motor racing series launched in 2010 as a feeder series for the GP2 Series, introduced by GP2 organiser Bruno Michel. GP3 followed the entire European leg of the Formula One series and the ...

in 2017 and 2018 * Primary font used in

Tableau Software Tableau Software ( ) is an American interactive data visualization software company focused on business intelligence. It was founded in 2003 in Mountain View, California, and is currently headquartered in Seattle, Washington. In 2019 the compa ...

website and documents * Primary font used in

El Pais EL, El or el may refer to: Religion * El (deity), a Semitic word for "God" People * EL (rapper) (born 1983), stage name of Elorm Adablah, a Ghanaian rapper and sound engineer * El DeBarge, music artist * El Franco Lee (1949–2016), American po ...

newspaper website * Primary font of official

reddit Reddit (; stylized in all lowercase as reddit) is an American social news aggregation, content rating, and discussion website. Registered users (commonly referred to as "Redditors") submit content to the site such as links, text posts, images ...

mobile applications * Font used in

Fox Sports Networks Fox Sports Networks (FSN), formerly known as Fox Sports Net, was the collective name for a group of regional sports channels in the United States. Formed in 1996 by News Corporation, the networks were acquired by The Walt Disney Company on Mar ...

on-screen scorekeeping and analytic graphics since 2017 * Primary font of

North Rhine-Westphalia North Rhine-Westphalia (german: Nordrhein-Westfalen, ; li, Noordrien-Wesfale ; nds, Noordrhien-Westfalen; ksh, Noodrhing-Wäßßfaale), commonly shortened to NRW (), is a States of Germany, state (''Land'') in Western Germany. With more tha ...

government websites, documents and logos *Primary font of

Axon Enterprise Axon Enterprise, Inc. is an American Scottsdale, Arizona-based company which develops technology and weapons products for military, law enforcement, and civilians. Its initial product and former namesake is the Taser, a line of electroshock wea ...

corporate logo and publications

Miscellaneous

* ''

The Sims 4 ''The Sims 4'' is a social simulation game developed by Maxis and published by Electronic Arts. It is the fourth major title in ''The Sims'' series, and is the sequel to '' The Sims 3'' (2009). The game was released in North America on Septem ...

'' used as a main in-game user interface font.

References

*Blackwell, Lewis. ''20th Century Type.'' Yale University Press: 2004. . *Friedl, Friedrich, Nicolaus Ott and Bernard Stein. ''Typography: An Encyclopedic Survey of Type Design and Techniques Through History.'' Black Dog & Leventhal: 1998. . *Macmillan, Neil. ''An A–Z of Type Designers.'' Yale University Press: 2006. . *Meggs, Phillip B. ''Revival of the Fittest.'' RC Publications, Inc: 2002. .

External links

*{{Commons category-inline
Font Bureau's website page on Benton SansFont Bureal Benton Gothic specimenAIGA Design ArchivesBenton Sans vs. News GothicBenton Sans Family History
*Webtype pages
Benton SansBenton Sans RE
*Type Network pages
Benton SansBenton Sans RE
Grotesque sans-serif typefaces Font Bureau typefaces Typefaces with text figures Digital typefaces Typefaces designed by Tobias Frere-Jones Typefaces designed by David Berlow