News Gothic is a

sans-serif In typography and lettering, a sans-serif, sans serif, gothic, or simply sans letterform is one that does not have extending features called "serifs" at the end of strokes. Sans-serif typefaces tend to have less stroke width variation than seri ...

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 list of type ...

in the grotesque or industrial style. It was designed by

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 ...

and released in 1908 by his employer

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 ...

(ATF). News Gothic is similar in proportion and structure to

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 desig ...

, also designed by Benton, but lighter. News Gothic, like other Benton sans serif typefaces, follows the grotesque model, resembling

serif In typography, a serif () is a small line or stroke regularly attached to the end of a larger stroke in a letter or symbol within a particular font or family of fonts. A typeface or "font family" making use of serifs is called a serif typeface ...

text faces of the period, with a double-storey lower-case 'a' and 'g'. Also distinctive are the blunt terminus at the apex of the lowercase 't', and the location of the tail of the uppercase 'Q' completely outside the bowl. The letter forms are compact, and descenders are shallow. The typeface differs from other grotesque sans-serifs in its rather light weight and open letterforms, contributing to a less severe, humanist tone of voice. For much of the twentieth century News Gothic was used in newspaper and magazine publishing with copies available on

Monotype Monotyping is a type of printmaking made by drawing or painting on a smooth, non-absorbent surface. The surface, or matrix (printing), matrix, was historically a copper etching plate, but in contemporary work it can vary from zinc or glass to ac ...

and Intertype machines for

hot metal typesetting In printing and typography, hot metal typesetting (also called mechanical typesetting, hot lead typesetting, hot metal, and hot type) is a technology for typesetting text in letterpress printing. This method injects molten type metal into a mol ...

. Both companies added additional weights to the family. For use in headlines, it was designed with condensed and extra-condensed styles. 'Gothic' was an early twentieth century term for sans-serifs, found mostly in the United States and Canada. It was also used in the UK, along with 'grotesque'. In Germany the term 'Grotesk' was used.

Metal type release

Benton's autobiographical notes list the following designs as his contributions to the family: *''News Gothic'' *''News Gothic Condensed'' *''News Gothic Extra Condensed'' ATF's 1923 specimen book also shows: *''News Gothic Extra Condensed Title'' (a headline face) As with Franklin Gothic, the foundry expanded the line sometime later, adding two more variants: *''News Gothic Bold'' (1958) designed by John L. “Bud” Renshaw; Intertype had already released a bold News Gothic in a hot metal typesetting version, however, as later did Monotype. *''News Gothic Condensed Bold'' (1965) designed by Frank Bartuska; versions also by Monotype and Intertype Both Monotype and Intertype released

oblique Oblique may refer to: * an alternative name for the character usually called a slash (punctuation) ( / ) * Oblique angle, in geometry *Oblique triangle, in geometry *Oblique lattice, in geometry * Oblique leaf base, a characteristic shape of the b ...

versions; McGrew reports that while ATF's archives contained 1912 production drawings for an oblique "we have no record of its production".

Cold type copies

Virtually all producers of cold type offered their own versions of ''News Gothic'' under different names: *''News Gothic'' — Alphatype,

Autologic Eddie Stobart Group is a British multimodal logistics company, with interests in road haulage, rail freight, deep sea and inland waterway transport systems and deep sea port, inland port and rail connected storage facilities, along with transpor ...

Berthold Berthold or Berchtold is a Germanic given name and surname. It is derived from two elements, ''berht'' meaning "bright" and ''wald'' meaning "(to) rule". It may refer to: *Bertholdt Hoover, a fictional List_of_Attack_on_Titan_characters, character ...

Compugraphic Compugraphic Corporation, commonly called cg, was an American producer of typesetting systems and phototypesetting equipment, based in Wilmington, Massachusetts, just a few miles from where it was founded. This company is distinct from Compugraph ...

Dymo Dymo Corporation is an American manufacturing company of handheld label printers and thermal-transfer printing tape as accessory, embossing tape label makers, and other printers such as CD and DVD labelers and durable medical equipment. The com ...

Harris Harris may refer to: Places Canada * Harris, Ontario * Northland Pyrite Mine (also known as Harris Mine) * Harris, Saskatchewan * Rural Municipality of Harris No. 316, Saskatchewan Scotland * Harris, Outer Hebrides (sometimes called the Isle o ...

MGD Graphic Systems MGD may stand for: * Maharani Gayatri Devi Girls’ Public School, Jaipur, India * Miller Genuine Draft beer, Miller Brewing Company * Guildford railway station, Perth, Australia, station code * Mean glandular dose, of radiation to the breast * Mei ...

, Varityper *''Gothstar Trade'' — Star/Photon *''Toledo'' — Graphic Systems Inc.

Digital releases

Because there is no active descendant of the American Type Founders Corporation making digital typefaces, ''News Gothic'' has been revived in digital form in many different versions from different sources.

Benton Sans Benton Sans is a digital typeface family begun by Tobias Frere-Jones in 1995, and expanded by Cyrus Highsmith of Font Bureau. It is based on the sans-serif typefaces designed for American Type Founders by Morris Fuller Benton around the beginning ...

is a greatly expanded font family based on News Gothic by

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 ...

, adding additional features such as wide styles and extra-bold weights. At 80 styles, it is one of the most comprehensive digital renditions of the News Gothic style. Its users include ''Newsweek'', ''Fortune'' magazine, the ''Boston Globe'' and Sotheby's. Digital releases actually named News Gothic have a variety of features, often adding in weights not present in the original design or removing some less popular ones. For example, Bitstream's release is rare in including the extra-condensed styles.

URW++ URW Type Foundry GmbH (formerly URW++ Design & Development GmbH) is a type foundry based in Hamburg, Germany. The foundry has its own library with more than 500 font families. The company specializes in customized corporate typefaces and the d ...

's (also sold by Fontsite) is only sold in one width but in a wide range of weights and with italics for every weight, while Linotype's lacks a light weight or any condensed styles. Monotype's revival, a subset of which is included with many Microsoft products, features the condensed style but not extra-condensed, and has wider spacing than several others.

Adobe Adobe ( ; ) is a building material made from earth and organic materials. is Spanish for ''mudbrick''. In some English-speaking regions of Spanish heritage, such as the Southwestern United States, the term is used to refer to any kind of e ...

, Linotype and

Bitstream A bitstream (or bit stream), also known as binary sequence, is a sequence of bits. A bytestream is a sequence of bytes. Typically, each byte is an 8-bit quantity, and so the term octet stream is sometimes used interchangeably. An octet may ...

have their own versions. The

version of News Gothic was extended with Cyrillic glyphs in 2005 and Greek glyphs in 2009 by Dmitry Kirsanov for ParaType, and is sold by them separately. Hamburg Serial is a lesser-known version of News Gothic by

SoftMaker SoftMaker Software GmbH is a German software company based in Nuremberg that produces office productivity software and digital fonts. SoftMaker was founded in 1989 by Martin Kotulla. Best known in Germany and the EU, SoftMaker is offering its s ...

, with italics that have a one-story 'a' and 'g'. News Gothic No. 2 is an enhanced version of News Gothic produced by the

D. Stempel AG D. Stempel AG was a German type foundry, typographic foundry founded by David Stempel (1869–1927), in Frankfurt am Main, Germany. Many important font designers worked for the Stempel foundry, including Hans Bohn, Warren Chappell, F. H. Ehmck ...

type foundry in 1984. It adds more weights to the News Gothic family than were available in other versions.

Source Sans Pro Source Sans Pro is a sans serif typeface created by Paul D. Hunt, released by Adobe in 2012. It is the first open-source font family from Adobe, distributed under the SIL Open Font License. The typeface is inspired by the forms of the Americ ...

is a single-width design based on News Gothic, but differs in having true italics and 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 let ...

for use with onscreen display. It was released in 2012 as Adobe's first open-source family under the

SIL Open Font License The SIL Open Font License (or OFL in short) is one of the major open font licenses, which allows embedding, or "bundling", of the font in commercially sold products. OFL is a free and open source license. It was created by SIL International ...

; Adobe's training material highlights it as having a more consistent

colour Color (American English) or colour (British English) is the visual perceptual property deriving from the spectrum of light interacting with the photoreceptor cells of the eyes. Color categories and physical specifications of color are associ ...

on the page than the rather condensed News Gothic. News Cycle is an open-source variant by Nathan Willis based on 1908 specimens of News Gothic typeface from ATF extended with full Latin, Greek, and Cyrillic glyphs. It is an open source typeface licensed under the

Similar designs

Linotype called their similar design ''

Trade Gothic Trade Gothic is a sans-serif typeface first designed in 1948 by Jackson Burke (1908–1975), who continued to work on further style-weight combinations (eventually 14 in all) until 1960 while he was director of type development for Linotype in t ...

'' while the

Ludlow Ludlow () is a market town in Shropshire, England. The town is significant in the history of the Welsh Marches and in relation to Wales. It is located south of Shrewsbury and north of Hereford, on the A49 road which bypasses the town. The t ...

version was known as ''Record Gothic''. Intertype copied the face under the same name and added a variant, ''News Gothic Bold'' (1955). Baltimore Type's copy was called ''Balto Gothic,'' while their copy of Inland Type Foundry's ''Inland Gothic No. 6'' was perversely sold under the name ''News Gothic.'' In 1916,

Sol Hess Sol Hess (born 1886, Philadelphia, PA – d. 1953) was an American typeface designer. After a three-year scholarship course at Pennsylvania Museum School of Industrial Design, he began at Lanston Monotype in 1902, rising to typographic manag ...

made alternate rounded characters for ''News Gothic Extra Condensed'' and the resulting face was sold by

Lanston Monotype Monotype Imaging Holdings Inc., founded as Lanston Monotype Machine Company in 1887 in Philadelphia by Tolbert Lanston, is an American (historically Anglo-American) company that specializes in digital typesetting and typeface design for use with ...

as ''Jefferson Gothic,'' which was also sold by Baltimore Type as ''Tourist Extra Condensed'' In 1935, M.F. Benton did much the same thing for A.T.F. and the face was called ''Phenix.'' Ludlow's ''Record Gothic'' began as a mere knock-off but, between 1956 and 1961, their in-house designer,

R. Hunter Middleton Robert Hunter Middleton (May 6, 1898 – August 3, 1985) was an American book designer, painter, and typeface designer. Born in Glasgow, Scotland he came to Chicago in 1908 where he studied at the School of the Art Institute. He joined the des ...

made many original additions to the family including: *''Record Gothic Condensed Italic'' *''Record Gothic Extended + Italic'' *''Record Gothic Bold + Italic'' *''Record Gothic Bold Condensed'' *''Record Gothic Bold Extended + Italic'' *''Record Gothic Bold Extended Reverse'' *''Record Gothic Thinline condensed'' *''Record Gothic Heavy Condensed'' *''Record Gothic Light Medium-Extended'' *''Record Gothic Medium-Extended + Italic'' *''Record Gothic Bold Medium-Extended'' *''Record Gothic Heavy Medium-Extended'' Record Gothic is, again, a very inconsistent family, and has never been fully digitised. Yu Gothic is a Japanese font bundled with some versions of Windows, but the Latin glyphs look similar to News Gothic. The fonts are otherwise unrelated.

Usages

*The identity for the

Brooklyn Academy of Music The Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM) is a performing arts venue in Brooklyn, New York City, known as a center for progressive and avant-garde performance. It presented its first performance in 1861 and began operations in its present location in ...

, designed by

Michael Bierut Michael Bierut (born 1957) is a graphic designer, design critic and educator, who has been a partner at design firm Pentagram since 1990. He designed the logo for Hillary Clinton's 2016 presidential campaign. Early life and education Michael Bier ...

, heavily uses News Gothic. *The text in figures of the scientific general

Nature Magazine ''Nature'' is a British weekly scientific journal founded and based in London, England. As a multidisciplinary publication, ''Nature'' features peer-reviewed research from a variety of academic disciplines, mainly in science and technology. It ...

is set in News Gothic. *The bold variant of News Gothic is used in the logo for the Swedish pop group

ABBA ABBA ( , , formerly named Björn & Benny, Agnetha & Anni-Frid or Björn & Benny, Agnetha & Frida) are a Swedish supergroup formed in Stockholm in 1972 by Agnetha Fältskog, Björn Ulvaeus, Benny Andersson, and Anni-Frid Lyngstad. The group's ...

, a logo conceived in 1976 by Rune Söderqvist. The scanning used for the logo comes from

, not

. The font is/was also used in promotional materials for the group, as well as CD and DVD liner notes. *News Gothic Bold is also used in the artwork for

The Fame Monster ''The Fame Monster'' is a reissue of American singer Lady Gaga's debut studio album, ''The Fame'' (2008), and was released on November 18, 2009, through Interscope Records. Initially planned solely as a deluxe edition reissue of ''The Fame'', ...

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 ...

. *News Gothic Bold was used in Saul Bass' opening title sequence for Alfred Hitchcock's 1960 thriller, '' Psycho''. *News Gothic Bold was used in the

Star Wars opening crawl The ''Star Wars'' opening crawl is a signature device of the opening sequences of every numbered film of the ''Star Wars'' series, an American epic space opera franchise created by George Lucas. Within a black sky background featuring a smatteri ...

for the main body of the text, as well as for the closing credits of each of the films in that series. *The version of News Gothic that was on IBM typesetters was used widely by Fluxus artists such as

George Maciunas George Maciunas (; lt, Jurgis Mačiūnas; November 8, 1931 – May 9, 1978) was a Lithuanian American artist, born in Kaunas. A founding member and the central coordinator of Fluxus, an international community of artists, architects, composers ...

(in his Fluxpublications) and

George Brecht George Brecht (August 27, 1926 – December 5, 2008), born George Ellis MacDiarmid, was an American conceptual artist and avant-garde composer, as well as a professional chemist who worked as a consultant for companies including Pfizer, Johnson ...

(in his event scores). *The logo adopted by Polaroid Corporation in the late 1950s, designed by

Paul Giambarba Paul Giambarba is an American graphic designer, cartoonist, writer and illustrator. He initiated Polaroid's corporate image development and product identity in 1958. Giambarba designed and produced hundreds of Polaroid packages and collateral ma ...

, is set in News Gothic, as was much of the type on the company's packaging and documentation up until the 1980s. *

General Electric General Electric Company (GE) is an American multinational conglomerate founded in 1892, and incorporated in New York state and headquartered in Boston. The company operated in sectors including healthcare, aviation, power, renewable energ ...

used a variant of the News Gothic typeface in transition from 2003 until they debuted the GE Inspira typeface in July 2004. *

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 ...

uses the News Gothic typeface as most of the text in the game. *The

CTV Television Network The CTV Television Network, commonly known as CTV, is a Canadian English-language terrestrial television network. Launched in 1961 and acquired by BCE Inc. in 2000, CTV is Canada's largest privately owned television network and is now a divis ...

once used the font in their news programming. *

Porsche Dr. Ing. h.c. F. Porsche AG, usually shortened to Porsche (; see #Pronunciation, below), is a German automobile manufacturer specializing in high-performance sports cars, SUVs and sedans, headquartered in Stuttgart, Baden-Württemberg, Germany ...

have used News Gothic in their promotion booklets and advertisements. * The numbers on the vertical

split-flap display A split-flap display, or sometimes simply a flap display, is a digital electromechanical display device that presents changeable alphanumeric text, and occasionally fixed graphics. Often used as a public transport timetable in airports or ...

s found in game shows from the late 1960s through the 1970s used News Gothic Bold. * The letter tiles in the original American version of

Scrabble ''Scrabble'' is a word game in which two to four players score points by placing tiles, each bearing a single letter, onto a game board divided into a 15×15 grid of squares. The tiles must form words that, in crossword fashion, read left t ...

are in News Gothic. *The

Halton Catholic District School Board The Halton Catholic District School Board (HCDSB) serves over 37,000 students at its 46 elementary schools, 9 secondary schools and 3 continuing education facilities. The HCDSB serves the communities of Burlington, Halton Hills, Milton, and Oakvi ...

uses News Gothic as the primary typeface in all of its communications and reports, as well as its logo. *Heidelberg Gothic, a variant of News Gothic, is the house font of the Heidelberg Gruppe. *JCP News Gothic commissioned by

JC Penney Penney OpCo LLC, doing business as JCPenney and often abbreviated JCP, is a midscale American department store chain operating 667 stores across 49 U.S. states and Puerto Rico. Departments inside JCPenney stores include Mens, Womens, Boys, Gir ...

consists of two new weights coordinated with

News Gothic, and is designed for use in advertising campaigns. *The primary

State Farm State Farm Insurance is a large group of mutual insurance companies throughout the United States with corporate headquarters in Bloomington, Illinois. Overview State Farm is the largest property and casualty insurance provider, and the la ...

typeface is SF News Gothic, a branded version of News Gothic. * The Spanish airport operator

Aena ENAIRE is the air navigation manager in Spain, certified for the provision of en route, approach and aerodrome control services. As a public corporate entity attached to the Spanish Ministry of Public Works, it is responsible for air traffic co ...

uses it for airport signage.

Bibliography

*Baines, Phil, Hastam, Andrew. ''Type and Typography''. Watson-Guptill Publications: 2005. . *Blackwell, Lewis. ''20th Century Type''. Yale University Press: 2004. . *Fiedl, Frederich, Nicholas Ott and Bernard Stein. ''Typography: An Encyclopedic Survey of Type Design and Techniques Through History'', Black Dog & Leventhal: 1998. . *Jaspert, W. Pincus, W. Turner Berry and A. F. Johnson. ''The Encyclopædia of Type Faces'', Blandford Press Lts.: 1953, 1983. . *Macmillan, Neil. ''An A–Z of Type Designers''. Yale University Press: 2006. . *Meggs, Phillip B. ''Revival of the Fittest'', RC Publications, Inc: 2002. {{ISBN, 1-883915-08-2.

References

External links

ATF's 1912 specimen book
showing News Gothic on pages 698-709. Many sample settings including ads and newspaper designs.
ATF's 1923 specimen book
(their legendary last major specimen before the Depression), showing News Gothic and many related types. News Gothic samples are 472-477 (original page numbers).
News/Trade/Franklin Gothic alternatives
- survey by Stephen Coles Grotesque sans-serif typefaces Newspaper and magazine typefaces American Type Founders typefaces American gothic typefaces Typefaces and fonts introduced in 1908 Monotype typefaces Typefaces designed by Morris Fuller Benton