League Gothic, open source font
This week I gave my design history talk on American Type Founders’ Gothics – a large collection of (mostly 19th century) sans serifs typefaces.
ATF was formed in 1892 by a merger of 23 American type companies – resulting in, literally, a huge pile of metal that had to be sorted, catalogued, duplicates removed and if necessary, redesigned. Morris Fuller Benton (1872-1948) ended up doing a lot of the dirty work – among the results were ATF’s very industrial Gothic series of typefaces.
These types exist today in many digital forms – some with their original ATF names, such as Franklin Gothic and News Gothic – or as revivals, which includes Benton Sans and Jonathan Hoefler’s comprehensive Knockout series.
Amidst recent revivals is Caroline Hadilaksono and Micah Rich’s League Gothic (above) – an interpretation of ATF’s Alternate Gothic No. 1 (below).
Snag your own free version here.
And hell, if you see any problems, fix em. The font is open source.
Alternate Gothic No. 1 specimen (cropped), ATF’s Book of American Types, 1934
M.F. Benton, read more on Benton here
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