SDES2198 Advanced Typography & Publication Design: Futura

Futura

Futura was designed by German designer Paul Renner between 1924 and 1926. His starting point and basis for the design was taken from classical Roman inscription capitals (Quay, 2005). The original drawings of the font were based loosely on the simple geometric forms of circle, triangle and square. Although Renner wasn’t a member of Bauhaus, these geometric shapes were influenced by the Bauhaus movement in Germany. (Linotype, 2009)

Renner experimented with alternative lowercase characters with at least three or four variations of lowercase ‘g’ and ‘a’ (Quay, 2005). These first type specimens were first commercially released by the Bauer Type Foundry in 1927. The design office at Bauer then assisted Renner in making changes to the original font in order to make it a more functional type family. So by 1928 these alternatives had disappeared in the second edition. (Loxley, 2006) Renner’s initial designs including several geometric alternative characters and ranging figure can be found in the typeface Architype Renner (Typomancy, 2005).

The geometric sans-serif family was originally published in Light, Regular and Bold. These were supplemented by Futura Black, a stencil version in 1929 (Loxley, 2006). It was one of the most popular fonts of the 20th century especially in the 1950’s and 1960’s. Futura is timelessly modern; in 1928 it was striking, radical yet tasteful - and today it continues to be a popular typographic choice to express strength, elegance, and conceptual clarity (Linotype, 2009).

In designing Futura, decoration was avoided, eliminating all non-essential elements. The fonts lowercase has a small x-height, tall ascenders and long descenders which benefit from generous line spacing (Linotype, 2009). The typeface works well as both body copy and a display font.

The typefaces strokes are of near even weight and geometric shape, this is visible in the almost perfectly circled round stokes, although the shape is slightly ovoid (Knowledgerush, 2009).

The counters of the font show that the spaces in ‘a’, ‘b’, ‘d’, ‘p’ and ‘q’ are not circular, as their bowls become narrower as they meet the stem. Other subtle features include the top counter of the ‘B’ is smaller than the lower; the ‘G’ is a broken circle with a cross-piece, with no straight edge on the right. The ‘M’ is splayed and the ‘j’ has no tail. (Loxley, 2006)

Due to the needs of the German language where capitals are more frequent, Renner gave the capital ‘C’ and lower ‘c’ vertical terminal cuts, allowing for a tighter fit. (Quay, 2005)

It is used in the identity of Volkswagen. While a variation of Futura is used exclusively in Boeing commercial airlines for flight deck labelling, for decals and instruments. Another variation is used by IKEA in its advertising and catalogues. (Typofile, 2009) Remarkably, the typeface was also used on the commemorative plaque left on the moon by Apollo 11 in July 1969. (Prepressure, 2009)