Franklin Gothic
Background
Franklin Gothic was part of a series of sans serif typefaces, also known as "gothic" typefaces, created by the American Type Founders, or ATF, for promoting purposes and was actually the third typeface out of a series of sans serif typefaces created. The creator of Franklin Gothic is a man by the name of Morris Fuller Benton who was apart of ATF as a developer for typefaces. Benton started out with Globe Gothic which then led to Alternate Gothic and then became the Franklin Gothic that we know of today and that has been used for over 100 years.
Franklin Gothic was created in 1902 but was not released to the public until 1905. When creating this typeface, Benton was inspired by older sans serif typefaces that fell under the “standard” category for American printers. Franklin Gothic only started out as a very small design family but after catching the attention of printers in the United States, ATF was almost demanded to add more to its tiny family. Franklin Gothic’s italics was added five years after it was created and two years later the shaded version was added, as well. This shading design was the last addition to the Franklin Gothic family by its creator Benton.
From the 1920s up until the late 1940s, old sans serif designs stopped being the most popular typefaces. New typefaces such as Garamond and Bodoni were the hot typefaces in the 1920s. Then serifless typefaces took over the 1930s such as Futura and Spartan. When the 1950s picked up, so did sans serif typefaces, once again. However, the graphic design audience was not satisfied with the old gothic typefaces and wanted a more sleek look to them. In the mid-20th century, some European type foundries tried addressing this problem by introducing new typefaces such as Helvetica and Univers in the hopes of pushing Franklin Gothic to modernize itself and become more popular once again.
A new company called the International Typeface Corporation, or ITC, took over the direction that Franklin Gothic was heading in. ITC had a very upstanding reputation and in 1980, they received permission from ATF to develop a newer version of Franklin Gothic. ITC had very high hopes for Franklin Gothic and had plans to give it four new weights to its name. ITC hired Victor Caruso to create these new weights for its roman and italics design; book, medium, demi, and heavy. In 1991, David Berlow added 12 condensed and compressed designs to the Franklin Gothic family.
Franklin Gothic started as a small family with only a handful of different styles of fonts other than its original roman look. As of 2008, Franklin Gothic has over 48 display designs and has two designs; one for text and one for display type. The Font Bureau is now currently working on a Franklin Text family to continue the legacy of Franklin Gothic. Franklin Gothic started as a single-weight typeface in a small family, but over time its family has grown exponentially and it is sure to be useful for another 100 years.
In Use
Aa Bb Cc Dd Ee
Ff Gg Hh Ii Jj Kk
Ll Mm Nn Oo
Pp Qq Rr Ss Tt
Uu Vv Ww Xx Yy Zz
Glyphs
Numbers
1 2 3 4 5
6 7 8 9 0
Characters
` ~ ! @ # $ % ^ & * ( ) - _ = +
[ ] { } \ | ; : ' " , . < > / ?
Anatomy
g
The "g" is the most identifiable anatomy trait in Franklin Gothic because of its unique shape and usage of loops and bowls.
a
Franklin Gothic is a grotesque, extra-bold sans-serif typeface. The "a" shows the mixture of the extra-bold typeface along with a somewhat similar bowl shape that "g" has.
Sources:
http://cdncms.fonts.net/documents/eec939d64ea6616e/ILFranklinv2.pdf