Gotham

Designer: Tobias Frere-Jones // Foundry: Hoefler & Frere-Jones // Country of origin: United States Release year: 2000 // Classification: Geometric Sans

One can’t really describe this Hoefler & Frere-Jones creation better than H&FJ themselves: “Gotham. What letters look like.” The typeface is simply self-evident. Each character just feels “normal” and “right.” Inspired by mid-century architectural lettering of New York City, Gotham celebrates the alphabet’s most basic form. These qualities made Gotham the most popular release of recent years. It’s used everywhere, in logos, in magazines, in the very things that inspired it: signs. Gotham’s simplicity is not merely geometric — like Avenir, it feels more natural than mechanical. In fact, its lowercase shares a lot with Avenir’s, despite being much larger. But Gotham’s essence is in the caps: broad, sturdy “block” letters of very consistent width.