utura

by Brandon Griffin

"It is possible that, through horizontal and vertical lines constructed with awareness, but not with calculation, led by high intuition, and brought to harmony and rhythm,

these basic forms of beauty, supplemented if necessary by other direct lines or curves, can become a work of art, as strong as it is true."

-Piet Mondrian

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FUTURA

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FUTURA

History

PaulRennerFutura is a sans-serif typeface created in 1927 by German type designer Paul Renner. He based his design on the simple geometric shapes that were repre-sentative of the Bauhaus design style of the time. The letters are constructed from simple forms like the circle, triangle, and square. Renner chose to avoid decorative strokes, which gives the typeface the ap-pearance of efficiency and forwardness. Even though Renner was not associated with the Bauhous, he still shared many of its ideas and felt that a modern typeface should embody modern models, instead of being a revival of an existing design.

a j v futura’s design is derived from basic geometric shapes, mainly circles, squares, and triangles .

futura medium

BASIC STYLES

futura medium italic

futura condensedExtraBoldAfter Renner’s original Futura was

created in 1927, it was followed with

the release of Light, Bold, and Bold

Oblique in 1928. He created further

variations such as Light Oblique, Me-

dium Oblique, Demibold, and Demi-

bold Oblique in 1930. And finally,

Book Oblique was released in 1939.

futura medium

futura condensed medium

futura medium italic

futura condensedExtraBoldIn 1936 an alternate design that uses

stencil letter forms was released called

Futura Black. From the 1930’s through

the 1950’s, Renner and other typeface

designers continued to create variations

of the original Futura, such as a large

family of Condensed versions as well

as many in Light, Medium, and Bold.

Much of Futura’s look is de-termined by it’s tall x-height.

One very noticable charac-teristic is that the strokes are all of similar weights, resulting in a low contrast typeface.

Upper case letters such as the A, M, N, V, and W have extremely sharp edges.

Many of the lower case letters exend above the cap height.

The O and other simi-lar letters are comprised of near perfect circles.

ANATOMY

circle SQUARE triangleBaskerville

circle SQUARE triangleFutura

Helveticacircle SQUARE triangle

DIFFERENCE

circle SQUARE triangleCentury Gothic

circle SQUARE triangleFutura

INFLUENCE

circle SQUARE triangleTwentieth Century

FUTFU

TFutura’s efficient and modern ap-pearance has been utilized extensive-ly since it’s release in 1927. Many of the original Bauhaus graphic de-signers used the type in their print mediums such as posters, books,

and advertisements. To this day it has continued to appeal to designers and artists looking for a contempo-rary typeface that blends well with their contemporary designs. It has a global appeal and has been used

FUTUR

A

over and over again for branding purposes and can be seen in many recognizable corporate logos such as Volkswagen, Domino’s Pizza, and swissair. Currently, Futura can be seen in several album and cd covers,

as well as in many television shows and movies. It is said to be the favor-ite typeface of movie director Stanley Kubrick. And, popular movie director Wes Anderson has used it predomi-nantly in the majority of his movies.

Futura

In 1969 members of the Apollo 11 Lunar Mission placed a stainless steel plaque on the moon

with this inscription. It features text set in

utura