The Type Pod
Anitra and Jason are two type nerds, who share the strange and wonderful stories of the typefaces we read every day (and their mutual disdain for Goudy)
The Type Pod
Futura
In this first episode, Anitra and Jason talk about Futura, that most versatile of modernist typefaces and its designer Paul Renner, OG Anti-fa.
Anitra tells Jason why the Nazis hated Latin typefaces. We argue about the merits of mathematical proportions and discuss why Futura is probably not classified as a “fun” typeface. Jason unfairly compares Type Designer Mathew Carter to a character from Game of Thrones.
Anitra chose to do the history for this episode thinking that she knows all about Futura because she has read lots of stuff about the Bauhaus, but does she actually? (Spoiler alert, turns out not really).
You can find the show notes and transcript set in Futura at: https://www.anitraland.com/podcast
If you'd like to share your own views on Futura, or the pod, email us on
designsleuth@yahoo.com or leave us a message on speakpipe.com/thesiswhisperer
You can find us on Twitter: @type_pod and on Insta: @the_type_pod
Our Producer, Professor Inger Mewburn is located at the Australian National University and is on twitter as @thesiswhisperer
Welcome to the Type Pod. I'm Anitra Nottingham, a former book designer, former typography teacher, and former co-chair of the Graphic Design School. I'm now a learning designer, but I'm a type nerd and I always will be.
Jason:I'm Jason Phillips, formerly a book designer and typography teacher. I'm a sometime illustrator and artist, but in my career, I've never strayed far from type, and it'll always have a place in my heart.
Anitra:We're whipped into shape by our producer Inger Mewburn, professor at the Australian National University and editor of the Thesis Whisperer blog.
Jason:We're designers and friends who went to the same design school. Anitra failed her typography assignments, but uh I didn't.
Anitra:Not to brag, Jason.
Jason:We met when we worked together at Oxford University Press, where we honed our type skills, became friends, and developed a mutual hatred of the typeface Gaudi, all of which still burns brightly 25 years later.
Anitra:Each episode we deep dive into one typeface, finding out the sometimes surprising history behind the design and the designer. We admire or not its anatomy, hundreds uses and cultural impact. And then we ignore all of that and talk about our feelings.
Jason:This episode we're going to talk about Futura. A transcript is available set in Futura, which you can download from the show notes. Okay, let's get started. Anitra, who designed Futura, when and why?
Anitra:Well, Jason, Futura was designed by graphic designer and type teacher Paul Renner. And I chose to do the history of Futura because I thought I could talk about the Bauhaus because Renner was like part of the Bauhaus, and spoiler alert, I can't because he wasn't. And I think I knew that. But anyway, here we are. And for all my ex-design students, yeah, clearly I didn't read the body copy in that assignment about setting the type teacher in the type.
Speaker 1:Anyway, the big confessions are coming out in our very first episode, listeners. You will be hooked.
Anitra:Let me warn you, there'll be more. Um, okay, so Renner knew people at the Bauhaus, though. He was a sympathizer and his work is definitely modernist. And as one can't talk about the modernists without talking about the Bauhaus, I'm gonna do it for a bit anyway. Although Jason's read the show notes and thinks I've done it a bit too long. You're welcome to skip ahead and skip the Bauhaus bit if it's boring.
Jason:There's just a lot, there's a lot about Bauhaus for someone who's not directly related to Bauhaus. But let's go. Let's go. I want to learn. I want to learn Anitra. I want to learn. I'm here for the duration. And it's a duration. It's a duration.
Anitra:Okay, let's let's go. All right. So if you've if you've studied or have been subjected to any Western art and design history courses, then you will know that the Bauhaus was a school of art and design that opened in 1919 in Weimar, Germany, and that it was headed up by the architect Walter Gropius. Even if you don't know the details, you'd probably know the Bauhaus was a school and that the influence of the teachers and the students has been vast. And look, if you don't know any of this, I'm a little bit jealous that you never had to sit through multiple lectures. They always made your own design school scene. Well, just a little bit second rate, to be honest.
Jason:We all have the scars.
Anitra:Even if you know nothing about the Bauhaus, you do because basically you've lived in a modernist vision of the city your whole life. Like the Bauhaus was the beginning of modernist architecture with all its clean lines and hard edges that we live in today. Modernism or universal design, as they like to call it, it's machined, it's precise, it's free of ornament, and so is Futura. And I think I can be excused for a bit thinking that Futura came out of the Bauhaus, right, Jason?
Jason:Yeah, I think Bauhaus is one of those movements that people know they should have heard of, and they hear of it and they always mean to educate themselves, but they never get around to it. And so, on behalf of us all, I'm thanking you for putting in the hard yards this time.
Anitra:Right, and and reassuring me that it's an easy mistake to make, correct?
Jason:Oh, yeah, absolutely. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because most of us don't really know what Bauhaus is, so we just go Bauhaus, modernism, everything clean and crisp, and is Bauhaus, must be. So completely.
Anitra:Well, can I just undercut that for a moment and tell you that the original version version of the Bauhaus was like was grand and kind of modernist vision-wise, but it was a bit handcrafty, right?
Jason:Very, very William Morris.
Anitra:Very William Morris. It was all about like getting together in the workshop, a high level of craft, yada yada yada. Gropius laid all this out in, well, I mean, basically it's a flyer, let's face it. Although the Getty Research Institute calls it a rousing manifesto that is laced with mystical analogies between creative production and spiritual awakening, which is you know the kind of things that architects like to do. Um, so Gropius is calling for the joining of fine and applied arts, or design as we call it now, and he was a total architect. Um, and he thought his own discipline mattered and was more important than the other, all the others. So sorry, architects and sorry, Inger, ex-architect, although I think she agrees with me because she's nodding. Yep. And that the Getty In Research Institute also says that so the school's like like vision, if you like, was to produce socially oriented and spiritually gratifying building of the future. So it's kind of a grand vision. Oh, it's got it. You gotta start with a lofty idea. Yeah, sure, why not? And it's a it's a kind of a long way from the end products, really. If you think about that handcrafted beginning, and everything at the end sort of looks slick and machined and free of like pesky emotions or ornaments or anything like that. Um a bit mass-produced, let's be honest. Well, exactly. The original flyer, by the way, the Getty Research Institute has a good description of it. And I remember the first time, I think Inger showed it to me for the first time. I was like, that's the Bauhaus. Um, it's a good description of the flyer. The design for the flyer by Lionel Feiniger, like he hinted at this. So the Getty Institute describes it this way. He illustrated Gropia's future-oriented vision, somewhat counterintuitively, with a woodcut image of a gothic cathedral replete with flying buttresses, pointed arches, and rays of light animating from its steeples. And look, honestly, I think you know RMIT should take a look at the branding and just have a bit of a think. That's all I'm gonna say. Look, he didn't go too far off. Gropious saw cathedrals as an example of the Gus, all right, Gesund Kunstwerk or total that's Gesamt Kunstwerk for Algernon. Wow, you're gonna do all the German pronunciation in this episode. Look, honestly, before the pandemic, remember the before times? I actually got to go and sit in front of the Koln Koln Cathedral. Cologne.
Jason:I think Cologne Cathedral.
Anitra:Thank you, thank you. And really, they're extraordinary things. So the Bauhaus, let's just say didn't think small, all right? No, they're all about learning about doing, their pedagogy was somewhat radical for the time, continues to be used today. And the school thought that the social time should be fun and creative too. So there's lots of pictures of students hanging out and looking like they're having like unforced fun, you know. And I kind of thought design school would be like this, and well, it just really wasn't.
Jason:No, no. I have to my neighbor across the road who had who ended up being a couple of years ahead of me at Monash, I think she tried to warn me off by suggesting that the design school there was full of freaks and weirdos and that I wouldn't fit in. And she hinted at something, and I'm gonna show my age here, something akin to that canteen scene from the 1980 film Fame, where all the creativity reaches such a fever pitch that the students spontaneously run riot and stop the traffic in New York, and it was nothing like that.
Anitra:No, it was the total opposite of that.
Jason:I felt my design classmates classmates were much more buttoned down than, for example, a guy in my first year philosophy class at Melbourne Uni who looked like Jesus auditioning for the village people.
Anitra:Yeah, for sure. Like the arts students were like way more.
Jason:Yeah, yeah, exactly. But the designers were clearly looking forecasting a corporate career for themselves. Yeah, they were, and that was the atmosphere.
Anitra:Should have been the first sign that maybe I wouldn't stay in it for my life. Anyway, so but look, enough about us, enough about us back to the Bauhaus. Okay. Teachers and students were free thinkers, okay? They're progressive, they're always embracing trying to create the new, and apparently their parties were legendary. There was a lot of dressing up, there was being gay, they were educating women alongside men, there was nude sunbathing. So, you know, the bauhaus inevitably pissed conservatives off, right? They got into more and more trouble, they had to move to Dessau, and the Nazis eventually shut them down for good in 1933. And look, I'm not trying to idolize the Bauhaus, like it's a bastion of white men. Only one woman, Gunther, you're gonna have to say it for me. Gunther Sturzel. That's it, thank you, ever made it to master, which is the equivalent of professor. And originally more women than men applied, so Gropius actually restricted their numbers to make sure that the school would have credibility. And women were encouraged to go into the weaving school because they were thought better to deal with 2D than 3D. So, you know, whatever. But I guess if you had to choose, you'd be on Gropius' side of radical art fun parties and not the Nazis, right?
Jason:Yeah, look, um, you know, I'm not sure I would have been up for the breathing exercises and the calisthenics at the start of every class, but I can confidently say that yes, I would pick Bauhaus over Nazis every single time.
Anitra:Thank you for nailing that part of the script where it says Jason agrees that the Bauhaus is better than the Nazis.
Jason:I just thought I should expand. I just thought I should expand.
Anitra:No, I thought you did it well. Thank you. So, one of the many things that the Bauhaus inspired, which pissed the Nazis off, was something called the new typography. Or you can say it in German if you like, de Neue Typograpie. Yes. No, no, that's good. That's good. Yeah, yeah. Of which Renner was a major component. Now, look, I'm not going to talk too much about De Neue typography right now because I'm going to save that for the Garamond episode. But it was explicitly inspired by the geometric forms of the Bauhaus. Like both Renner and who designed Futura and another famous typographer, Jan Tischold. Yeah.
Jason:Which sounds like a sneeze, but is an actual thing.
Anitra:Yeah, don't say bad things about Jan. You know how I feel about him. Um, visited the Weimar exhibition of 1993 and 1923. So that's when the Bauhaus was moving out of its handicrafts phase and into its machine age design. They're really inspired by it. So we're thinking asymmetrical layouts, we're thinking use of negative space. It's really quite a departure from what was there at the time because actually Germany used black letter typography or gothic text at the time for all of its official documents and a lot of its other stuff. So it's one of the last places in Europe to use that style of typography. All right, so I was looking up like, you know, because you know, I'm interested in how like machines like make design change in in ways. So I was looking up, looking up that sort of link. And Christopher Burke wrote a PhD on Renner. So that topic is chosen, goddammit. That's not my PhD. Um he talks about how the post-inflation and shortages of the 1920s, which gave the Bauhaus its impetus to link art and technology to produce machine-made objects. So I think that's an interesting connection there, that it's actually shortages and need that drove that kind of let's use less ink on printing all that gothic black letter text, and let's let's use uh more sort of what's called Latin or the letters that we use today. And Renner participated actively in this movement, developing alongside people such as Meis Van Der Roe and Walter Gropius. So, yeah, okay, so Bauhaus-esque, okay? Yeah, like sympathizer. Strip back, keep it. So now I'm gonna finally make that swing that I said I was gonna do. I'm gonna make that pivot. So now about Renner, okay. So now about the guy who designed Futura. He was born in 1878.
Speaker 3:Wow.
Anitra:He was a painter, a graphic designer, type teacher, and type designer. So kind of like me and Jason, right? He designed books for a living, then he became a teacher. He was uh principal of the printing trade school in Munich, he was co-founder and director of the Master School of Germany's printers. He's like, you know, like pretty solid kind of thought leader and um and master of the craft, right?
Jason:And industry leader.
Anitra:Yes, exactly. Everything I've read about him sort of says that he's kind of your centrist kind of focused, let's do the work kind of a guy. He wasn't really into the kooky bauhaus breathing exercises, raise of light shit. He was really about making stuff, right? Smokes, smocks to the sun, yeah, not for him, right? So the new typography is about font design, so like futura. It also used asymmetrical, like I said, asymmetrical, unadorned settings, it's not traditional. And the Nazis hated this, right? Yeah, because they hated Latin instead of black letter. Black letter, which is that traditional Germanic type I was talking about.
Jason:So think old Bibles, bikey gang tattoos, pretty much what we see the logo, pretty much what we see co-opted by heavy metal bands around the world today.
Anitra:Yeah, and neo-Nazis, right? So the Nazis thought it was the only kind of typeface that should be used because, well, it always had been, right? So the argument apparently got pretty heated at the time, which you know it goes to show that you can still argue about type even if you don't have Twitter, right? The University of Kansas put it really, really nicely. It said the Gothic type became enmeshed in nostalgic notions of German culture during a protracted conservative reaction that crystallized radically with Hitler's ascension to power. So the relative virtues of Gothic and Roman type within the German context, they were the subject of much discussion during this time. And Renner had, quote, strong views. Yeah. Okay, and I can identify with that. I love a strong view. But he actually lost his job in 1933 because of these strong views, and what really finished him off was in 1932 he released his booklet called, and I can't even say it, Kultra Boschumus. Go.
Jason:Culture Bolshevismus. God, even I'm struggling with that one.
Anitra:With a question mark, though. Question mark. Or as Google Translate called it, cultural Bolshevism. So the Nazis accused him of intellectual subversion. And look, honestly, you've got to be cool to be intellectual subversion.
Jason:And for we all aim to be accused of that.
Anitra:Look, it's the highest praise. And for, quote, being responsible for an imbalance that could not be politically justified. Latin typeface were prioritized over, gothic ones, which just goes to show the fascists are capable of getting annoyed about everything, not just who can use a bathroom or whether there are a lot of taco trucks around.
Jason:They just want the trains to run on time. That's it.
Anitra:Do they? Is that all they want? Anyway.
Jason:No, clearly not.
Anitra:Yeah, all right. Let's moving on. So Renner's father was actually like an evangelical preacher type. And that bio at the University of Kansas, which I noticed that every other website ripped this one off, because that's where people like just lifting great slabs of it. It's really great. Um, says that he was brought up to have a very German sense of leadership. Okay. Sounds bad, but anyway, of duty and responsibility. He was suspicious of abstract art and disliked many forms of modern culture such as jazz, cinema, and dancing. But equally he admired the functionalist strait in modernism. And his son-in-law once said about him that a day that he did nothing, or at least read nothing serious, was for him a day sadly lost.
Speaker 3:Wow.
Anitra:Which makes him kind of a weird mix and maybe not that fun at dinner parties, I think.
Jason:I suspect not.
Anitra:No, but look, he was an anti-fascist, which makes him a cool guy. Yeah, yeah. You know, it's kind of cool to be kicked out of your job for liking Sans Serifs so being intellectual subverties. So, and I just one more thing that Renner said in his book, Please Say the name of the I'm not even calling Cultural Bolshevism. Anyway, he said, one day the ever more malicious and violent political idiocy will be able to sweep away the entire Western culture with its dirty sleeve. And dude, lately, oh, I totally get what you're saying there. So, like weirdly, when he left, he made sure that one of his guys took over because he wanted to protect the people that were still working there. And that guy was called. Are you ready? Are you ready for this?
Jason:Oh God.
Anitra:George Trump.
Speaker 1:It's a sign, it was a sign of the future.
Anitra:I'm just saying.
Speaker 1:Wow.
Anitra:So Jan Tischold also taught at his school, so I'll probably save my love for Jan for another episode. But let's just say that was quite the stuff he had there. It's nice that he tried to um protect them. He wrote a couple of other books, um, typography as Kunst.
Speaker 3:Yep.
Anitra:Right? Typography is art, die Kunst de typography, the art of typography. So you're gonna be able to get it. You're getting better. I am getting better. And order, colour, and harmony, which I'm not even going to attempt to pronounce in the um so about futura, okay? So I've made the link, I've done the bauhouse, I've got you to Paul Renner. We know he's an anti-fa guy. Now it's a futura. So this typeface was commissioned in 1924 by Jakob Heigner. Hegner.
Jason:Hegner.
Anitra:Hegner, thank you. Who wanted a typeface that was artistically liberating, which is a great brief. Artistically liberating. What do you do with that? Anyway, yeah, it was made for the Bauer type factory. Rainer worked on it for about four years. So it was commercially available and released in 1927, but he started working on it in 1924. Um, it became the cornerstone of De Neue typography, and Creative Pro has a really nice line on how it's used. So it says form follows function became the keywords, and careful reasoning constrained all the character shapes to their utmost functional simplicity. With Futura in typographical terms, the Industrial Revolution has reached its logical conclusion, which is a really nice way of putting it. And I'd argue maybe we haven't really well we'll talk about that. It is a big claim. Um Futura's kind of a sequel, if you like, of Renner's earlier typeface called Renner, which uses a dot where the stem of the R should be and has an excitingly zigzag lowercase g. And I personally quite like it, maybe a little bit more than Futura. Futura came after and was arguably influenced by Johnson's typeface for the London Underground, which is still used today. Although Renner claims that the other typefaces of the time, like so Johnson, Gil sans, Eber, were influenced by him because he took a slideshow around and that told the whole world what had led me to this new type form. So, you know, he's like, bitch, you stole my you stole my ideas. So anyway, the first words that Renner set in futura were die schrift and serase. Yep. How did I do? Not bad. Yeah, pretty good. Or as Google Translate told me, the font of our time. Yeah, which is kind of is right. Like the typeface is almost a hundred years old and it still looks modern, and maybe it always works.
Jason:Yeah, I agree with that.
Anitra:There you go. Okay, so I'm coming, I'm coming, bringing this down home now, Jason. Futura was a hit from the beginning. Renner reported that by 1925, so like a year after he started making it, most of Frankfurt was already set in Futura, all the signage for the city, by order of the city planning office. So this is the best bit for me. Uh oh, I don't know, this is the bit for me. So ironically, the Nazis ended up using Futura because it made signposts easier to read, and you need that when you're having a war through your own cities. Also, you need your propaganda to be easily understood by other people, and black letter or gothic type is just really hard to read.
Jason:It's a bitch to read.
Anitra:So they even did the like whole 180 and denounced gothic black letter type as, of course, a Jewish abomination, which of course they did, and no one called them on it. And these days that makes way more sense than it used to, but anyway. Um, so finishing up with Renner, he lived like after he got fired, he lived in what they call internal exile. So he didn't leave Germany, and a lot of people have tried to sort of rehabilitate him because of this. Like, you know, there's a taint on people who didn't flee to Switzerland, which most typographers seem to have done. But yeah, after the war, he helped sort of do the rebuilding, and he was kind of what my son would call a centrist. Like he didn't sort of tried not to take either side. So he actually didn't like the German taste for large books, for instance, because he thought that's the kind of vanity that got Germany into all the trouble to begin with. Stop it, right? And he died in 1956. So during the time that the international style, which he helped lay the foundations for, was um was flourishing. So that is about the Bauhaus.
Jason:Wow, well, well done. Well done, Anitra. Thank you for that. You've brought it to a thundering conclusion there. Thank you. Um, okay, but we're talking 1925. So what else is happening around that time, Anitra?
Anitra:Okay, so other things that happened in between so 1924 to 27, let's say. So when he was working on Futura, the first Winter Olympics were in 1924, and that same year, Petrograd was renamed Leningrad, and a radio signal was first broadcast from the Greenwich Observatory. In 1927, at the end, the first telephone call was placed between New York and London. So that's like feels like internet times, right? Really rapid development. Um, in 1924, the Islamic Caliphate, which had been going for 407 years, was abolished when the last caliphate was deposed. So there's sort of like wow, there's like empires crashing. Yeah, absolutely. Hitler was jailed for the beer hall push. He only served eight months of a five-month sentence, which is still much served, I'm just saying, for his first insurrection attempt. Um, the last California grizzly bear was sighted. Oh, okay. Um, the first television was demonstrated in 1926, and that's the same year that the Great Gatsby was published.
Jason:Wow.
Anitra:The same year that the Scopes trial convicted John Scopes for teaching Darwinism, and the same year that the Ku Klux Klan had a parade of 35,000 marches in a couple of years. If only it had stayed 35,000. And no connection here, but locally the city of Brisbane was formed in 1927.
Jason:So there's a lot happening.
Anitra:Yeah, a lot.
Jason:All right. Well, let's get on to our next section, anatomy, which is where we check out our typeface for the episode. So, Anitra, what give us some details about Futura's body.
Anitra:So, first I think we should explain why we call this section anatomy. Yeah, and that's because literally that's the word that typographers use to talk about typeface and describe their parts, right? Yep. Most of the language is anthropomorphic, and it's partly why we're talking about type this way for the whole theme of the podcast, like as a as a body of as a body of desire, perhaps. Anyway, you really need to cut that out, Inger. That was really terrible. Um, so in just my type, Simon Garfield explains that when type was made out of metal, like a like a little metal kind of letter, like, and there were single individual letters that were set together, so each one was individual, the whole character, the whole bit of metal was known as the body, the space below the bed letter was a beard, and the flat sides were shoulders, and the whole raised part is called the face, hence type face, right? So the bottom of a P is called a foot, the stroke of an R is called a leg, inside of a lowercase E is called an I. It's a bit weird, and you just really have to go with it.
Jason:Uh hey, it's the only time as a yeah, but it's the only time as a non-medical person, as a design student, you get to sound like a doctor.
Anitra:It does, it makes it sound very professional. So you know it's very technical at the side. It has its good points. Yeah, it does. Futura is what is called a Lionel geometric in the Vox classification system. Now, look, we're going to talk about the Vox system in some upcoming episodes. It's got its own weirdness and controversy. Trust me, it's more interesting than it sounds. All you need to know for now is that like any profession, if you want to talk about or if you want to sell something visual, especially if you haven't or you can't see it, you have to find ways to classify it. And that helps people search for it as well and helps people all know what you're talking about. So to designers, when they heard linear, when they hear linear, they mean sans serif. It doesn't have the little strokes at the bottom of the letters. Geometric means it's based on mathematical shapes, full circles, vertical straight strokes, right? And that the stroke is the same all the way around. So futura is a modernist font, so it is it is geometric by its very nature. And Ron Johnson, who wrote the review about Christopher Burke's PhD on Paul Renner, just to be, you know, a little bit kind of bringing it back to the strong reference there, yeah, discusses the interesting notion that this essentially modernist font actively suppressed the differences between lower and uppercase in pursuit of a purely rational design, yet a weighted stroke emerged as it developed because it was quite clear that a purely geometric form looked ugly. So it looks geometric, but actually it's kind of not exactly like he played with it a little bit. Um, Futura, because of that geometric nature, so it has very thin and very wide letters, so it's not designed. Well, I say it's not designed to please the eye because last night I was feeling hashtag mood about Futura and I'm kind of over it and it's all Macky. But Bringhurst in Elements of Typographic Style says it's one of the most harmonious and rhythmic Sans serifs ever made. Its proportions are graceful and humane and can be set as extended text, which I don't know. Extended text, futura, I think that might be pushing it a little bit. Well, what does extended text mean? Extended text means um like in a whole paragraph of text, like a whole body of text, not just a headline, right? Like a headline's easier to read than a whole paragraph. Good question, Inger. Thank you. Okay, well, I guess uh No, go on, sorry for it, I just can't get to it.
Jason:No, no, because you because you you've kind of undercut the first part there.
Anitra:Do you want me to go back and not do that bit? No, no, no, no, it's fine.
Jason:Okay, Anitra, I think I have some mixed feelings about your assessment there. I mean, I agree absolutely, mod future is modernist and geometric, but there are lots of little quirks that to me mean it isn't mathematically precise and perfect, and that also makes it pleasing, at least to my eye. As you sort of alluded to, several of those apparently perfect circles, in fact, aren't like the O and the bowls is the round part of the A and the B. And some of the curved strokes taper ever so slightly where they join the vertical strokes. And I think sometimes in design you're face you're faced with a choice between being optically correct, which looks right, and being technically correct, which sometimes looks wrong. And I think this is a typewriter that Renner walks with absolute confidence here.
Anitra:Okay, all right. I might give you that. Like once I got over my hashtag mood and went and consulted Bringhurst's elements of typographic style, I was like, maybe I am being a bit mean. A bit hard. And you'd already called me out on it, so thank you for keeping me honest.
Jason:And the other the other counterpoint I would make, which which again you've sort of alluded to, I like that um that description of it being harmonious and rhythmic because I think that combination of wide and narrow letters is very reflective of Roman and other traditional capitals. And I don't know whether we've been influenced by those existing typefaces or whether it's like a natural tendency, but I think that narrow and broad letter form rhythm that builds up is also more reflective of the proportions that happen when we actually write characters because some are broad and some are narrow, and you develop it develops a kind of rhythm as you're reading, which I think other typefaces like Helvetica, for example, and we're not going to talk about Helvetica too much, we've already established that. But I mean Helvetica is a typeface that has made much more of a an attempt, an overt attempt to regulate the width of its letter forms, and I find that comes across as very forced and artificial.
Anitra:Yeah, I would agree with you there. Like Helvetica is much more machined than than Futura.
Jason:So, in that sense, I think you know, Futura cops a bit of a bad rap, but it's it's actually got a lot of human quirks about it to balance out that overwhelming sense of it being kind of perfect and geometric and machine.
Anitra:I think I'll give you that, except for the ultra-thin, which I think is terrible, but we'll get to that.
Jason:We'll get to that. Okay, so well, that's it. Probably a good segue into what's your overall impression and what's the best or worst feature of this typeface.
Anitra:Okay, so I'm just gonna go back to the Vox classification system for a sec and say the interesting thing about any classification system, as Derrida would tell you, is that ultimately binaries break down, things escape, and it's hard to classify. And types are safe too. So if you have a look on font websites, you'll see that they're finding other ways of classifying type, they're leaving Vox behind, and that's to help you search. So, like fun is a good classification category, right? Is it? And I say this to say that Futura is not fun. Oh, and I think it's kind of its worst feature. Like, I think of it like modernist architects, like it's relentlessly style over comfort, right? Like the architect sketch with the rotating knives kind of swings to mind. The Barcelona chair. It looks great, it's kind of uncomfortable. I mean, is it for one person? Is it for two? And that's kind of how I feel about the O being so wide and this the J being so straight and thin. So um, it was originally originally released in six weights, right? And Futura Black was added much later, and it looks different. And Futura Bold is by far and away the best font of all the Futuras. The ultralight, way too weedy and should never be used. And I think there's an argument that it isn't good at really large sizes or at really small ones either. So I don't know.
Jason:We're really we're really coming at this from different angles. I mean, I look, there are a couple of letter forms that I might quibble with. I do prefer my lowercase J to have a curl in the tail.
Anitra:And who doesn't, Jason?
Jason:Yeah, but and frankly, the question mark in Futura is a bit bonkers.
Anitra:The question mark's insane and great to tell.
Jason:Not in a good way, but um otherwise, overall, I can only admire the simplicity and I think the economy of Futura's letter forms. Okay, and I disagree. I think that overall the proportions and the integrity of each character actually remain strong through all the different ways. No, even no, even the condensed faces, which I admit is quite an achievement and a lot, and I mean a lot of typefaces fall flat in this regard.
Speaker 1:Also it's Futura.
Jason:No, no, I think look, I'm not saying I don't like condensed fonts as a rule. But but I think one of the one of the great things about Futura is that even when it's subjected to that kind of visual contortion, uh-huh. It actually maintains its integrity. It does work to a degree and a lot better than a lot of other fonts out there.
Anitra:The other thing I will say is everyone has their own opinions.
Jason:This is true. This is true.
Anitra:Well let's ask a question at this point. Yeah, yeah. What's a condensed font?
Jason:So a condensed font is a narrow version of the sort of standard face of the of the font.
Anitra:So you know how like you can actually squish a text box in say PowerPoint, and you can push the type and make it thinner. This is where the design has already done it for you, and you should never push type and make it thinner.
Jason:You shouldn't have you should never do it. Yeah, yeah.
Anitra:But it's and any decent typeface will have condensed versions included with the original set.
Jason:And that that's the same. It's and um the opposite of that is is like an extended version where they've stretched it horizontally, kept the the vertical proportions the same, but they've stretched it horizontally. I'm not saying then that they're often not the greatest looking.
Anitra:No, they're often not. But kind of like the responsive design, like they design it for the website and it doesn't work on the phone, and yeah, always you know so anyway.
Jason:But um, anyway, I was gonna say the other the other thing that I I think every designer, or maybe this is just me, finds it hard to shake certain events certain aspects of what it was what was fashionable when they were forming their own personal design aesthetic.
Anitra:Yeah, so that's really true.
Jason:People talk about the 80s as being the era of big hair and big shoulder pads, but it's also the time of generous kerning. And I think that Futura is a typeface that can actually handle a lot of kerning and still remain cohesive, and again, that's something that can't be said for every typeface. Kerning.
Anitra:Yeah, Inger Inger has a question.
Jason:You're gonna ask me what what the hell is kerning? So kerning is the spacing between individual letters, as opposed to tracking, which is more about the spacing across a line of text. So there was a bit there was just the this fashion in the 80s of having a lot like letters, yeah, particularly headlines and that sort of stuff, were really spaced out. If if you can find a copy of The Face magazine, for example, that's like the epitome of what we're talking about.
Anitra:And April Griman's early work, um amazing, and I think she probably used to be true. I should ask that.
Jason:And it's honestly, it's some people would hate it. Uh it's it's a it's a kind of fashion. It's a it is a fashion thing, but it's something I haven't I haven't kept the hair or the shoulder pads, but I've kept I've kept that that extra kerning kind of thing in my as a design aesthetic. Yeah, so anyway, all right, enough about that. We'll get on to the next important section, which is why you should or perhaps shouldn't get into a relationship with this typeface. I mean, each typeface is made for or is good for a particular purpose or purposes. So, what's futura good for and not good for, in your opinion, Anitra?
Anitra:Well, I think that I'm gonna answer that question by telling you where you'll find it. So you'll find Futura, the absolute vodka bottle, the logo is Futura. I believe it might even be the condensed. And Domino's Pizza is also Futura. Costco apparently is Futura Italic. Although I looked at the Costco logo and I'm I'm not entirely sure about that, but look, maybe Red Bull, Louis Vuitton, like that's quite a spread. Yeah. And so they would say to me that Futura fits a purpose for lots of different things. If you can sell pizza and overpriced handbags, and vodka, yeah, and vodka, yeah.
Jason:Yeah, and look, I'll eagle-eyed viewers of the ABC comedy series Rosehaven might recognize Futura from the signage for McCallum Real Estate. So it's there in pop culture, it's it's pop culture, it's not there, even to Tasmania.
Anitra:Um, so to the point where you can see why there was a movement to boycott it in 1992, and the early 90s were a time when people were boycotting things and writing manifestos about things, and I kind of love that about design in that era. But actually, Art Directors Against Futura Extra Bold Condensed was published in in the 13th edition of TC.
Jason:Given what we were just talking about earlier, I think we would all be happy to sign up to that particular manifesto. No, I don't think anybody in their right mind is. Nobody in their right mind is going to advocate for futura extra bulk condense because it's like the worst nightmare.
Anitra:Well, Stanley Kubrick apparently used it for every film title, and there's a quote from Tony Frewan who did all the graphic design for his films, and he says he he tried to turn Stanley away from san serifs, but Stanley was having none of it, and he remained and I quote wedded to the star regardless of the film and like sympathies to Tony because clients could be really annoying.
Speaker 3:Oh, yes. Yeah, yeah. And where's Anderson?
Anitra:He's carried on the tradition, he uses it on things like signs and documents in his film is uh well, even when it's not historically accurate, um, and that probably bores the pants off his designer as well. So I think people get attached to it and stay with it. Yeah, um carrying on the space theme, Futura is the first typeface on the moon. Wow, the one the famous we came in peace for all mankind, mankind, anyway, plaque is set in uppercase futura. Because, like, if you're going to say, What type should we put on the moon? I mean, the answer is obvious. It is futura. Like, I agree with you. Futura, yep. Um, fun fact, in not in 2009, IKEA switched from Futura to Vedana, and this ignited what Simon Garfield calls a type war. And I quote from just my type here, it's just so great. Most customers didn't like the switch. There was a rudeness on websites. Newspapers wrote about it in cutting ways, and there were frank exchanges on BBC radio, like the height of middle class discontent, right? He says that it did mark one of those moments when a lot of people found they cared about something they'd never cared about before. One walked around IKEA and felt a little queasier, or rather queasier than normal. And he points out that this caused consternation not only among tight geeks like us, but real people, presumably you listening to this podcast, and thanks for making it this far. Suddenly there was a font war. So uh, and his thing is like there's a quirkiness to Futura that um that isn't in Verdana, and that Verdana also is strongly associated with Microsoft, so it must be bad, and that's true. Yeah, that is true. Designers and Mac users, it's a child thing. Yes. I'm not I'm not gonna defend it or excuse it, it just is. Um, I think I used Futura on a young adult book about a time-traveling girl. So I had Bembo and Futura for the modern history vibe, and I think it still looks modern, like I said 50 years on. I once used it in a student project for vitamin bottle packaging, and that's the first time I realized that you can't be a complete bastard to work with, especially that question mark. And but I did get an HD for that project, not a typography project.
Jason:No, no, let's yeah, we haven't we haven't just lied to you in the intro.
Anitra:No, right, let's not go too far.
Jason:All right, so well for me, future is a typeface that I might not use for a while. I mean, I think all typefaces can suffer from overkill, but then I do, and I find that I fall in love with it all over again. Oh well, uh you know, and the the style of the lowercase a and the G, which are what we call single story. So that's an A that with a round um body and a or a round counter and a and a vertical stroke as opposed to having that little weird kind of cap over the top of it. Um that some people to some people that gives Futura a slightly juvenile juvenile feel, but maybe that's what keeps it young. Yeah, well, maybe it is. But I also think that you know, Futura has that timelessness about it, and so it can be a really useful contrast when needed to complement a classic serif font, sort of like the pairing between a crisp wine and a rich cheese.
Anitra:Oh, that's a lovely analogy. Yeah. Thank you. Yeah, thank you. I completely agree with that.
Jason:Now I want some rich wine and a nice cheese. Okay, we're we're we're on the home straight, people. Right, go that final section, which is kiss, date, kill, or marry, which is when we talk about why we would want to be with this typeface, or not. So is this typeface futura a one time thing, or do you go out with it occasionally? Do you never use it, or do you use it so much you worry about yourself? So okay, Anitra, let's get real.
Anitra:Like kiss occasionally, maybe. I used it a lot in school. And when I worked in book design, I used it. But I guess as I went into more corporate work, I wasn't able to choose as much. So maybe that's when I stopped using it. And I found I didn't go back to it. Like I used to really be in love with it. Hence the vitamin bottles, Futura battled with it. You know, I kind of really loved it. He says I'll kind of admit, like in pure functionality terms, I'm just going to say Vedana is better than Futura.
Jason:No, no.
Anitra:No, no, like Garfield says, Garfield says Vedana is more crafted and rounded, and it is. And it's also designed by type designer Matthew Carter, who rocks along this is Vedana, by the way, who rocks along Silver Ponytail. And I once embarrassedly fangled all over Matthew Carter at a type conference in New Orleans. So sorry, Matthew, about that. So I mean, but good on I care, really. I mean, it can be hard to work with, but I mean, to the point where sometimes I think you could classify it as a difficult person. Although I'll leave Futura bold out of that, because I think that's kind of easier to work with. I think I'd go for Bendon instead of Futura or Verdana. So anyway, how about you, Jason?
Jason:Well, look, I'll just for the sake of our listeners, I will just point out that at this point in his life, Matthew Carter bears a striking resemblance to Tyrion Lannister. So, and he looks like he would strangle you with that rock and silver ponytail. So we would do it in a really, really good way. This is a salutary lesson on being careful about who you fangirl. I'm just saying.
Anitra:He was really nice about it.
Jason:Getting back to Futura, which is the subject of our podcast, and not uh Matthew Carter. Um, look, honestly, hopefully this isn't this isn't our first and only episode since we have such a different response to this typeface.
Anitra:But controversy.
Jason:I confess I would marry Futura. Which means I guess at least I wouldn't have to be competing with you for its affections.
Anitra:That's true. Our type our friendship would would die.
unknown:Yeah.
Jason:Like I said, um, Futura is a typeface I would come back to again and again, and each time it reminds me of why I love it. I guess we're talking a lifetime commitment. Hey, don't pull that face. I didn't pull that face when you mentioned Matthew Carter.
Speaker 3:Okay.
Jason:So, yes, Futura is kind of ubiquitous and probably overused, but whenever I see it, I don't think, oh, Futura again, which is usually my reaction to Helvetica. Yeah, because it makes me admire anew its versatile its versatility and utility. And how many designs can you still say that about nearly a hundred years on?
Anitra:Not many. Exactly. Fair point.
Jason:All right, let's wrap this up.
Anitra:Let's wrap this up. Yeah. Thanks for listening. These are our feelings and opinions about typefaces. We don't always agree. We're interested in yours. And if you're a designer listening and we've said things wrong, we also listen to critiques. So feel free to tell us when we're wrong.
Jason:If we've said something factually incorrect, please please no, please let us know and we will correct the record.
Anitra:But where I mean, even if like emotionally wrong.
Jason:Well, that's true. That's true. And we'll we'll possibly choose to ignore you and listen to our feelings.
Anitra:But you can email us on the address in the show notes. You can leave us a review on Apple Podcasts. That's where you can also rate us, and that makes the pod easier to find for people like I don't know, Matthew Carter. And if you're listening and you're a designer and you've got designer friends you want to tell about this pod, or just tell a friend anyway, please do that. We'd love that. Or your students. All your students, right, exactly. If you want to join us with a question and opinion, a great way you can do that is via our speak pipe page. We'd love to hear from you. So where can you find us, Jason?
Jason:Uh you can email me at design sleuth at yahoo.com.
Anitra:And I am at anitchanaut on all the things, especially Pinterest, where you will see my typography board full of typography goodness. You can find me at anechaland.com and you can find the type pod at the underscore type underscore pod on Twitter and on Instagram. And on the website when I get that finished and designed later on today. And our producer Inga is at Thesis Whisperer on Twitter, where she has way more followers than the underscore type underscore pod, which has not many at the moment. But you can help you can help us with that. There we go. Join us uh in our next episode. We're gonna talk about Times New Roman, which is the 10 pounds of shit in a five-pound bag typeface. Although putting 10 pounds of visual shit into a five-pound visual bag is often the designer's job, we still do it with something other than Times New Roman because it is boring. But in the next episode, we'll talk about why it's boring, but also we'll make it interesting too, I promise. Okay, thanks for listening, everyone.
Jason:Thanks for your company.