Bank Gothic
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| Category | Sans-serif |
|---|---|
| Classification | Geometric |
| Designer(s) | Morris Fuller Benton |
| Foundry | American Type Founders |
| Re-issuing foundries | Bitstream, FontHaus, Linotype |
Bank Gothic is a rectilinear geometric sans-serif typeface designed by Morris Fuller Benton for the American Type Founders (ATF) in 1930. The typeface is an exploration of geometric forms, and is contemporary with the rectilinear slab serif typeface City by Georg Trump. The typeface also bears comparison with late nineteenth century engraving faces.
In 1980s, Linotype created a digital version that includes small caps characters to map onto the lowercase keys of the keyboard. At the time, Linotype only digitized the medium weight of the family, and no PostScript version has been made.
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[edit] Bank Gothic Pro
In 2010 FontHaus [1] released an updated revival of the original Bank Gothic complete with a lowercase, a complement of small caps and a new suite of punctuation glyphs. The family consists of Light, Medium and Bold weights in both a regular and a condensed style. The new lowercase characters did not exist with the original release and were modeled after many similar Morris Fuller Benton designs released by The American Type Founders Company in the 1930s. Bank Gothic is a registered trademark of Grosse Pointe Group, LLC, and is licensed exclusively through DsgnHaus, Inc. d/b/a FontHaus.
[edit] DeLuxe Gothic
In 2003 letterforms artist Michael Doret began work on DeLuxe Gothic—a derivative version of American Type Founder's Bank Gothic. Unlike the 1930s original, Doret’s font contains lowercase characters. The DeLuxe Gothic Family was released in OpenType format in 2010 by Alphabet Soup Type Founders with both regular and condensed styles as well as traditional shortcaps. DeLuxe Gothic was the name originally used by the Intertype Corporation for its version of Morris Fuller Benton's Bank Gothic. Prior to its September 8, 2010 release, it was known as Bank Gothic AS.
[edit] Morris Sans
In 2005, Linotype editor Dan Reynolds began work on the Morris Sans family, a revised and extended Bank Gothic. The revised design includes lowercase letters, and redesigned letters %, ‰, Ø, §, ƒ, Ç. A base is also added to the numeral 1.
The font family comes in 3 weights and 2 widths. OpenType features include small caps, old style figures, proportional lining figures. It supporting ISO Adobe 2, Adobe CE, Latin extended Character sets.
[edit] Popular use
[edit] TV series
Bank Gothic is often used for opening credits in TV series, such as 24, Battlestar Galactica, Drake and Josh, The King of Queens, ER, NCIS, Stargate SG-1, Robot Wars, The Event, Falling Skies and Terra Nova. The Amazing Race replaced Microgramma with Bank Gothic as the main font used in the show. The sitcom Just Shoot Me also used the font for its title logo and credit type from the start of the third season until midway through its fifth season. The Nick GaS logo has the letters "G" and "S" set in Bank Gothic.
[edit] Movies
Bank Gothic has been used heavily in posters and advertising for recent movies, particularly action movies; it has been used for either the title or the promotional materials of The Day After Tomorrow (2004), Hancock (2008), Jumper (2008), Eagle Eye (2008), Knowing (2009), The International (2009), X-Men Origins: Wolverine (2009), A Perfect Getaway (2009), and The Hunger Games (2012).
[edit] Video games
It has also been used in the video games: GoldenEye 007, 30 Seconds to Mars, Descent: FreeSpace, FreeSpace 2, StarCraft, Hitman: Contracts, Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, and Call of Duty: Black Ops. The typeface was used extensively in packaging and advertising of Bungie's Marathon series, and entire manuals were laid out in Bank Gothic. A derivative of Bank Gothic is used as the official Nintendo GameCube logo typeface.
Some of the games from the Grand Theft Auto series, most notably Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas and Grand Theft Auto IV also make use of the font for packaging, manuals and various game interface elements.
[edit] Television news
The typeface is a popular font for the use of digital on-screen graphics for local and national television news, seeing heavy use by the stations owned by Hearst Television since the 1990s, along with CBS News. It was also for a time on Granada Television's regional news program, Granada Tonight (now called Granada Reports).
[edit] References
- Blackwell, Lewis. 20th Century Type. Yale University Press: 2004. ISBN 0-300-10073-6.
- Fiedl, Frederich, Nicholas Ott and Bernard Stein. Typography: An Encyclopedic Survey of Type Design and Techniques Through History. Black Dog & Leventhal: 1998. ISBN 1-57912-023-7.
- Jaspert, W. Pincus, W. Turner Berry and A.F. Johnson. The Encyclopedia of Type Faces. Blandford Press Lts.: 1953, 1983. ISBN 0-7137-1347-X.
