Twentieth Century is a
geometric sans-serif typeface designed by
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 mana ...
for
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 ...
in 1937. It was created as a competitor to the successful
Futura typeface for Monotype's
hot metal typesetting system. Like Futura it has a single-story 'ɑ' and a straight 'j' with no bend.
A very large font family, Twentieth Century is particularly known for a limited range of styles being bundled with many
Microsoft
Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational technology corporation producing computer software, consumer electronics, personal computers, and related services headquartered at the Microsoft Redmond campus located in Redmond, Washin ...
products such as
Office
An office is a space where an organization's employees perform administrative work in order to support and realize objects and goals of the organization. The word "office" may also denote a position within an organization with specific du ...
. Numerous other variants exist, including versions for very small text and an
Art Deco
Art Deco, short for the French ''Arts Décoratifs'', and sometimes just called Deco, is a style of visual arts, architecture, and product design, that first appeared in France in the 1910s (just before World War I), and flourished in the Unite ...
-influenced titling capitals design, Twentieth Century Poster, with rounded capitals. In addition, Twentieth Century served as an inspiration for ''
Century Gothic'', designed by
Monotype
Monotyping is a type of printmaking made by drawing or painting on a smooth, non-absorbent surface. The surface, or matrix, was historically a copper etching plate, but in contemporary work it can vary from zinc or glass to acrylic glass. The ...
in 1991.
Casting history
The various weights and widths were cut over a period of ten years:
* ''Twentieth Century'' (1937)
* ''Twentieth Century Bold Italic'' (1937)
* ''Twentieth Century Extrabold Italic'' (1937)
* ''Twentieth Century Extrabold Condensed Italic'' (1938)
* ''Twentieth Century Ultrabold'' (1941)
* ''Twentieth Century Ultrabold Condensed'' (1944)
* ''Twentieth Century Medium Condensed Italic'' (1947)
* ''Twentieth Century Ultrabold Italic'' (1947)
Foundry type copies
The first
American
American(s) may refer to:
* American, something of, from, or related to the United States of America, commonly known as the "United States" or "America"
** Americans, citizens and nationals of the United States of America
** American ancestry, pe ...
knock-off of ''
Futura'' was
Baltimore Type Foundry’s ''Airport''. No information exists on how this was produced, but it resembles ''Futura'' so closely, that it is thought to be
electrotyped. After Monotype introduced ''Twentieth Century'', Baltotype began selling some weights of this face under the ''Airport'' name.
Digital type copies
There presently exist two modern releases, by Monotype and Lanston Type (LTC). Monotype’s current release is much larger than that included with Microsoft products, and includes additional light, semi-bold, extra- and ultra-bold styles.
Even less commonly seen are the quirky Art Deco-influenced display alphabet Twentieth Century Poster, intended to be complementary, and Twentieth Century Classified, a small print design with a very high
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 ...
.
This veers away from the strict geometry of the main design, featuring a more conventional double-story ‘a’, presumably to be more legible. A similar design was offered by Linotype’s Spartan, which may be an influence. Lanston's design is in a narrower range of styles, but includes a set of additional stylistic alternates and small capitals.
LTC has also digitised other Hess sans-serif designs, such as Jefferson Gothic (a titling caps design similar to Twentieth Century Poster, but more condensed) and Tourist Gothic (an earlier grotesque design, to which Hess also added rounded caps).
Twentieth Century Poster has also been revived under the name as Renard Moderne by the company Nick's Fonts, a release that includes small capitals as a lower case.
Digitisations of the original design are sometimes marketed as ''Tw Cen MT'', possibly due to archaic file name length restrictions.
Footnotes
#McGrew, Mac, ''American Metal Typefaces of the Twentieth Century,'' Oak Knoll Books, New Castle Delaware, 1993, ., p. 315.
# McGrew, p. 9
Microsoft's description of ''Century Gothic''
External links
Specimen in original metal typeFutura Alternatives- Stephen Coles' extremely broad round-up of it and other digital Futura competitors.
{{DEFAULTSORT:Twentieth Century (Typeface)
Geometric sans-serif typefaces
Monotype typefaces
Microsoft typefaces
Typefaces and fonts introduced in 1937
Typefaces designed by Sol Hess