Gotham Examples

Long before the emergence of a profession called "graphic design," there was signage. Up until the mid-twentieth century, the job of providing architectural lettering often fell to engineers or draftsmen, most of whom worked outside of the typographic tradition. The shape of facade lettering was often determined by the practical business of legibility, rather than any sort of stylistic agenda — although inevitably, even the draftsman's vision of "basic building lettering" was influenced by the prevailing style of the time.
Although designers have lived with this lettering for half a century, it has remarkably gone unrevived until now. In 2000, Tobias Frere-Jones undertook a study of building lettering in New York, starting with a charming but rarely examined sign for the Port Authority Bus Terminal. Though Frere-Jones wanted Gotham to exhibit the "mathematical reasoning of a draftsman" rather than the instincts of a type designer, he allowed Gotham to escape the grid wherever necessary, giving the design an affability usually missing from 'geometric' faces. Unlike the signage upon which it was based, Gotham includes a lowercase, an italic, a full range of weights, and a related condensed design.