It’s also been used in countless logos, including well-known brands like Crayola, Best Buy and Gillette.įutura has been a perennial favorite with print designers, despite its quirks. A testament to the power of its simple shape is that it continues to be used widely both in print and (famously) in Stanley Kubrik and Wes Anderson films. Its influence can be seen in more recent fonts like Avenir, Brandon Grotesque, and Century Gothic. The enormous commercial success enjoyed by Futura led to the creation of many more geometric sans-serif typefaces in the years after its release. (MOMA has a great online gallery of typographic work that came out of the New Typography movement.) Influence of Futura
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presented content according to hierarchy.The movement proposed an approach to graphic design that: Renner is more closely associated with influential designer Jan Tschichold and The New Typography, a movement that predated and was contemporary with the Bauhaus. They applied this same aesthetic to type-letterforms should be clean, simple shapes, devoid of all embellishments. In the Bauhaus ideology, a form should be pared down to its essence, stripped of all unnecessary and distracting decoration. Organized around the simple geometric forms of circle, square and triangle, Renner’s original sketches for Futura reflect some of the ideas that had captivated those involved in the movement. While not involved in the Bauhaus, he was influenced by it and by the same cultural and artistic ideas that gave rise to the Bauhaus. Futura and the Bauhaus?īoth Paul Renner and Futura are often associated with the Bauhaus movement, but there is some debate about the interplay between them. In the process of bringing Renner’s initial drawings to metal type, the Bauer designers made adjustments that brought his original concepts for Futura closer in line with traditional typographic letterforms. It is extremely effective as a display font, but can also be pleasant to read in longer form as a text face. One of Paul Renner’s original drawings for the typeface that would become Futuraĭesigned by Paul Renner between 19, Futura was released commercially in 1927 by the Bauer Type Foundry in Frankfurt, Germany. She has published a number of books on graphic design with Princeton Architectural Press, including Thinking With Type. He holds an MFA in graphic design from the Maryland Institute College of Art, where he also taught graphic design, and an MA in history from the University of Chicago.Įllen Lupton is a writer, graphic designer and the director of the Graphic Design MFA program at Maryland Institute College of Art and of the Center for Design Thinking. His design work has been featured in Communication Arts, Print, and Graphis.
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He is an assistant professor of graphic design at Brigham Young University. Presenting artifacts from the Apollo 11 Mission, haute couture branding, and even gas station pumps, Thomas explains (and contradicts) his titular advice with wide-ranging commentary on the meanings, constraints, and deceptions of using a typeface.ĭouglas Thomas is a graphic designer, writer, and historian. Designer and historian Douglas Thomas unpacks Futura’s symbolic and practical influences on design, commercialism, politics, and contemporary social life. Never Use Futura is the first English-language book to chronicle the cultural history witnessed (and recorded) by the typeface Futura, from its avant-garde beginnings to its midcentury consumer triumph to its present-day nostalgic, critical, and forward-looking uses.
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One of the most iconic designs of the twentieth century, Futura has sold millions of people their hopes and dreams, not to mention shoes and cars true to its earliest advertising, nearly a century old, Futura is “The Type of Today and Tomorrow.”
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Long outliving its creator Paul Renner, Futura has weathered a worldwide economic depression, international trade embargoes, political boycotts, and partisan propaganda, plus decades of knockoffs and competitors. Futura tells a history of modern public life hidden in plain sight.