Copperplate Gothic is a

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 ...

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 Com ...

(ATF) in 1901. While termed a "''Gothic''" (another term for sans-serif), the face has small glyphic serifs that act to emphasize the blunt terminus of vertical and horizontal strokes. The typeface shows an unusual combination of influences; the glyphs are reminiscent of stone carving or lettering on copperplate engravings, the wide horizontal axis is typical of Victorian display types, yet the result is far cleaner and leaves a crisp impression in

letterpress Letterpress printing is a technique of relief printing. Using a printing press, the process allows many copies to be produced by repeated direct impression of an inked, raised surface against sheets or a continuous roll of paper. A worker com ...

or offset printing. Goudy designed Copperplate Gothic in capitals only, since the design was intended to be used for headings and key words rather than for body text. It is not at all characteristic of Goudy's work, which is generally in the old-style serif genre. Goudy created it early in his career while in need of commissions, although he wrote in his 1946 autobiography that he "treasured" the drawings for their quality and noted that the design remained largely used. It was developed on the initiative of ATF manager Clarence Marder while Goudy was living in

Hingham, Massachusetts Hingham ( ) is a town in metropolitan Greater Boston on the South Shore (Massachusetts), South Shore of the U.S. state of Massachusetts in northern Plymouth County, Massachusetts, Plymouth County. At the 2020 United States Census, 2020 census, t ...

. ATF later cut other versions, such as bold styles, condensed and shaded styles, but never a lower case. The typeface is often used in stationery, for social printing and business cards. It is also classically seen acid-etched into glass on the doors of law offices, banks and restaurants. Master printer J.L. Frazier, no great fan of sans-serif types, wrote of it in 1925 that "a certain dignity of effect accompanies...due to the absence of anything in the way of frills," making it a popular choice for the stationery of professionals such as lawyers and doctors.

In popular culture

The typeface was used in the logo of the game show ''

Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? ''Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?'' (often informally called ''Millionaire'') is an international television game show franchise of British origin, created by David Briggs, Mike Whitehill and Steven Knight. In its format, currently owned and l ...

'' and the

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logo from 1990 and 1997 until 2012. It was also used in the opening

title sequence A title sequence (also called an opening sequence or intro) is the method by which films or television programmes present their title and key production and cast members, utilizing conceptual visuals and sound (often a opening theme song with vi ...

end credits Closing credits or end credits are a list of the cast and crew of a particular motion picture, television program, or video game. Where opening credits appear at the beginning of a work, closing credits appear close to, or at the very end of ...

and on Paul Allen's business card in the 2000 film '' American Psycho''. The typeface was also used in the 1990s for Sega's second logo for the Sega Genesis and

Sega CD The Sega CD, released as the in most regions outside North America and Brazil, is a CD-ROM accessory for the Sega Genesis produced by Sega as part of the fourth generation of video game consoles. It was released on December 12, 1991, in Japan ...

, as well as the logos for the

Sega 32X The 32X is an add-on for the Sega Genesis video game console. Codenamed "Project Mars", it was designed to expand the power of the Genesis and serve as a transitional console into the 32-bit era until the release of the Sega Saturn. The 32X us ...

Sega CDX The Sega Genesis, known as the outside North America, is a 16-bit fourth generation home video game console developed and sold by Sega. It was Sega's third console and the successor to the Master System. Sega released it in 1988 in Japan as ...

, and

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, as well as their slogan at the time, "Welcome to the Next Level." It has been used for the Feature Program logo on Winnie the Pooh videos distributed by

Walt Disney Home Video Buena Vista Home Entertainment, Inc., doing business as Walt Disney Studios Home Entertainment, is the home entertainment distribution arm of The Walt Disney Company. The division handles the distribution of Disney's films, television series, an ...

. Between 2010 and 2019, the typeface was featured in the uniforms and branding of the Golden State Warriors, a basketball team in

San Francisco San Francisco (; Spanish for " Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the fourth most populous in California and 17th ...

. It is also used for the logo of the California-based rock band Cake. In the TV series ''

Future Man Roy Wilfred Wooten (born October 13, 1957), also known as RoyEl, best known by his stage name Future Man (also written Futureman and known to fans as Futche) is an American musician, inventor and composer. He is best known as a member of jazz ...

'', the time traveling character Wolf references Copperplate Gothic by name. In the year 1625 he wanted to use the typeface for a pamphlet, and described it as "classic, timeless". In "Super Sunday", season 2 episode 13 of the TV series '' The Middle'', Brick Heck pines over the typeface used in a news article about the Super Bowl. He tells his father Mike that the font used is Copperplate Gothic, stating that it is part of the sans serif typeface family, after which he did his signature whisper to himself "sans serif".

Related typefaces

The general style of Copperplate Gothic is known as wedge-serif, due to the very narrow serifs pointing outwards, or as engraving faces due to the similarity with engraved letters. Copperplate Gothic's serifs, which are much less bold than the letters, are small by the standards of the genre. The wedge-serif style is sometimes called Latin, especially in Europe, and was quite popular there for much of the twentieth century. For example,

Adrian Frutiger Adrian Johann Frutiger ( ; 24 May 1928 – 10 September 2015) was a Swiss typeface designer who influenced the direction of type design in the second half of the 20th century. His career spanned the hot metal, phototypesetting and digita ...

's early design Initiales Président (1952) was intended to be a French competitor; Frutiger in his autobiography noted that they were for makers of type "one of the safest investments. Smaller printers in particular had a steady demand for them." His later Méridien (also called Frutiger Serif) is a text face with some similarities, although this has more normal-sized serifs and a true lower-case.

Notes

References

Citations

Works cited

*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 Encyclopedia of Type Faces.'' Blandford Press Lts.: 1953, 1983. . *Macmillan, Neil. ''An A–Z of Type Designers.'' Yale University Press: 2006. .

External links

Linotype webpage on Copperplate GothicMyFonts webpage on Copperplate GothicSightings of Copperplate Gothic in the BoldATF's 1923 specimen brochure
showing Copperplate Gothic on pages 334–349 (original book page numbers). Many example settings and variants in the family are shown, with other related fonts also used for similar purposes on succeeding pages. A guide to 'Correct Society Printing for Letterpress Printers' intended to help general printers break into the business card market follows on pages 389–396. {{OS X typefaces Serif typefaces Incised typefaces American Type Founders typefaces Letterpress typefaces Photocomposition typefaces Digital typefaces Typefaces and fonts introduced in 1901 Typefaces designed by Frederic Goudy