Neutraface is a geometric
sans-serif typeface
A typeface (or font family) is the design of lettering that can include variations in size, weight (e.g. bold), slope (e.g. italic), width (e.g. condensed), and so on. Each of these variations of the typeface is a font.
There are thousands o ...
designed by
Christian Schwartz for
House Industries, an American digital
type foundry
A type foundry is a company that designs or distributes typefaces. Before digital typography, type foundries manufactured and sold metal and wood typefaces for hand typesetting, and matrices for line-casting machines like the Linotype and M ...
.
It was influenced by the work of architect
Richard Neutra and was developed with the assistance of Neutra's son and former partner,
Dion Neutra.
Design
Neutraface was designed by Christian Schwartz over the period of a year with assistance in art direction from Ken Barber and Andy Cruz.
It was the result of a project started by Schwartz to design "the most typographically complete geometric sans serif family ever",
[ based on Richard Neutra's principles of architecture and design.] The Neutraface alphabet was developed through consultation with Neutra's son and former partner, Dion Neutra, and with reference to the signs on the buildings designed by Neutra.[ Since there were limited samples of Neutra's signage and no lowercase, much of the design was Schwartz's invention. The lowercase was influenced by Avenir, Futura, Nobel and ]Tempo
In musical terminology, tempo ( Italian, 'time'; plural ''tempos'', or ''tempi'' from the Italian plural) is the speed or pace of a given piece. In classical music, tempo is typically indicated with an instruction at the start of a piece (ofte ...
.
Although Neutraface was conceived as a display and headline typeface, Neutraface Text was created to complement Neutraface Display. Neutraface Text has a larger x-height
upright 2.0, alt=A diagram showing the line terms used in typography
In typography, the x-height, or corpus size, is the distance between the baseline and the mean line of lowercase letters in a typeface. Typically, this is the height of the le ...
than its display counterpart and increased stroke contrast.[
]
Styles
Neutraface was originally released with Display and Text styles. Additional weights have been released.
*Neutraface Condensed is an adaptation of Neutraface with a condensed width that Schwartz began to develop as soon as he and his colleagues realized how popular the original series was. It was released by House Industries in 2004.
*Neutraface No. 2 is a revision of Neutraface made by Schwartz in response to what he perceived to be a demand for a "more 'normal' Neutraface". It is described by Schwartz as a "director's cut" of the original typeface, with the main change being its raised crossbars, reducing the eccentricity of the design and increasing its suitability for body text. Neutraface No. 2 was released by House Industries in 2007. The family also included an inline face.
*Neutraface Slab is a derivative of Neutraface in a slab serif
In typography, a slab serif (also called ''mechanistic'', ''square serif'', ''antique'' or ''Egyptian'') typeface is a type of serif typeface characterized by thick, block-like serifs. Serif terminals may be either blunt and angular ( Rockwell), ...
style, following the style of geometric slab-serif popular in the interwar period. The concept originated as a joke but when Schwartz proposed the idea to House Industries, they convinced him to follow through with the concept. The development of Neutraface Slab by Schwartz, Kai Bernau and Susana Carvalho began in 2005 and it was released by House Industries in 2009 in both text and display weights.
Usage
Neutraface is very widely used, and Schwartz has commented, "I can't leave my apartment without running into an ad for a new condo development using it, or a restaurant, or a new cookbook." Some examples of the usage of Neutraface are in the signage for the New York City
New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the most densely populated major city in the Un ...
Shake Shack
Shake Shack is an American fast casual restaurant chain based in New York City. It started out as a hot dog cart inside Madison Square Park in 2001, and its popularity steadily grew. In 2004, it received a permit to open a permanent kiosk with ...
chain, book covers for Taschen
Taschen is a luxury art book publisher founded in 1980 by Benedikt Taschen in Cologne, Germany. As of January 2017, Taschen is co-managed by Benedikt and his eldest daughter, Marlene Taschen.
History
The company began as Taschen Comics, ...
's ''Movie Icons'' series, advertising material for Wendy's
Wendy's is an American international fast food restaurant chain founded by Dave Thomas (1932–2002) on November 15, 1969, in Columbus, Ohio. Its headquarters moved to Dublin, Ohio, on January 29, 2006. As of December 31, 2018, Wendy's was t ...
fast food restaurants, and posters for movies. For example, It was used for the title of the 2005 remake of '' House of Wax'', and 2008 film '' Quantum of Solace''. Neutraface was also used in both the intro and outro of the 2005 film ''Robots "\n\n\n\n\nThe robots exclusion standard, also known as the robots exclusion protocol or simply robots.txt, is a standard used by websites to indicate to visiting web crawlers and other web robots which portions of the site they are allowed to visi ...
''. Rite Aid
Rite Aid Corporation is an American drugstore chain based in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. It was founded in 1962 in Scranton, Pennsylvania, by Alex Grass under the name Thrift D Discount Center. The company ranked No. 148 in the Fortune 500 l ...
's new logo since 2020 uses Neutraface. The font has been called the "gentrification font" for its use in house numbers on new midcenturyesque housing developments.
Neutraface was also the subject of a parody video of Lady Gaga
Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta ( ; born March 28, 1986), known professionally as Lady Gaga, is an American singer, songwriter, and actress. She is known for her image reinventions and musical versatility. Gaga began performing as a teenag ...
's song " Poker Face" on YouTube
YouTube is a global online video sharing and social media platform headquartered in San Bruno, California. It was launched on February 14, 2005, by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim. It is owned by Google, and is the second mo ...
, titled "Neutra Face: An Ode On A Typeface".
Asked why Neutraface became popular, Schwartz commented "I guess it was just normal enough and just different enough...a House font that you could buy and your boss would let you use. There’s only so much you could do with the Rat Fink
Rat Fink is one of several hot rod characters created by artist Ed "Big Daddy" Roth, one of the originators of Kustom Kulture of automobile enthusiasts. Roth conceived Rat Fink as an anti-hero to Mickey Mouse. Rat Fink is usually portrayed as e ...
fonts."
References
{{reflist, 2
External links
Neutraface
at House Industries
Typefaces and fonts introduced in 2002
Geometric sans-serif typefaces
Typefaces designed by Christian Schwartz
Typefaces with text figures
Typefaces with optical sizes
Unified serif and sans-serif typeface families