The simplest is that the version on most computers is woefully incomplete. The basic version contains only 4 styles instead of a full family, which makes it hard to create typographic contrast and hierarchy — both mainstays of good design. As a text face, Futura can be a difficult typeface to master. With proportionally short x-heights, it can be hard to use at small sizes.
The final letterforms support a facade of strict geometry that masks the sophistication of the letterforms. Many of the changes are subtle deviations from mathematical purity that are essential for obtaining the right visual effect.
For reformers, roman types represented a positive attitude toward internationalism, commerce, and science. For traditionalists and nationalists, they posed a cultural threat to the core of German identity.
He celebrated the return to traditional orthography as a sane return to legibility, albeit with snide remarks about the magazine’s pride in “the chic, the utter modernity of its readers” and its arrogance as the “arbiter elegantiarum.”
Within a decade of Futura’s release, every major American type company now had a Futura-like typeface in its catalog.
Every major type company of the last 20 years has its own licensed versions: Bitstream Futura, Adobe Futura, Paratype Futura, and even Monotype Futura and Linotype Futura. The idea of a geometric san serif and its name are now so powerfully linked that people want Futura — not a substitute. Even though we now buy Futura from any number of companies, all of them send royalties back to the Renner family for the Futura name, in licensed trademarks of Bauer types.
Futura as the enduring model of geometric sans serifs has more to do with the success of its nearly identical copies in the US than it does with its geometrical perfection; in Europe, Futura was never the only model and never the only market leader. Today the success of copies defines the aesthetic and cultural reach of the original. In 50 years, it is possible that the only version of Futura anyone will remember will be a free version on GitHub or Google Fonts.
Though any new creation loses Renner’s hand or Bauer’s machine precision, in an age of mass production, the model proves far more useful as a template than the original design. Tiny lead letters packed in heavy boxes and stored in orderly trays reach only as far as their modes of distribution. Futura is really more about a more far-reaching idea: a self-assured geometric sans serif, not too rigid but still precise, simplified forms thoughtfully stripped of extraneous complexity, a marriage of hand and machine. It is an aesthetic idea about modernity — clean lines with a slight human touch, embodied in a name filled with hope.
The new typeface, Gotham Slab, cemented Obama’s reputation for cutting-edge design but was still familiar enough to be reassuring. Mitt Romney went with Trajan, a decidedly conservative typeface — perhaps “severely conservative,” as Romney called himself.
On the Republican side of the 2016 campaign, various candidates used Futura or Futura-like typefaces in their campaigns: Chris Christie, Marco Rubio, and Jeb Bush. The broad similarity in campaign designs, especially on social media, may have contributed to the inability of each of the candidates to convince Americans of the uniqueness of his or her messages, and demonstrates that campaign design follows trends more often than it sets them. Perhaps each candidate wanted to fit in rather than stand out.
The Apollo missions embody the power of clear communication and interlocking systems. Systems are processes and interactions that have been formalized into rules or standards. Once those standards have been adopted, they mobilize incredible power. The most iconic manifestation of the system is the countdown checklist operation. A representative for each mechanical and electric component of a space-bound rocket is required to give a positive word before the thrilling proclamation of “All systems go — proceed with operation” that precedes a countdown and launch. It is a system that formalizes and simplifies the thinking of the thousands of people working on the rockets. In optimized systems, all the people involved contribute to their fullest, knowing that their individual work is essential to the whole — and that the do not have to understand the whole in order for it to work.
The marking system legitimated each piece and, because of the visual similarity of each essential marking, contributed to ease of use.
The astronauts had enough to worry about in space. So instead of asking them to master the various subtleties of operating one of the most complex and powerful cameras, NASA printed a label with simplified instructions. The fact that the label was printed in Futura made it part of a system that the astronauts easily recognized as their own.
Defaults are always conservative, because visual authority takes time to become established.
Now that Futura is no longer this nation’s default (and Helvetica and its clones are), Futura once again feels sexy, sleek, unique, and modern — far more than it did when it was used for the Apollo missions. In today’s context, stripped of some of its everyday generic uses, Futura reacquires some of its original popularity: a perfect reduction of form and clean geometry that stands out as unique.
Typefaces are not typography: the space between letters or words or lines of type (kerning, tracking, and leading), not to mention text color, size, placement, and above all, the negative space around text itself, combine to create the essential context in which a typeface is read.
Despite everything that Futura has meant, intentionally and unintentionally, it’s still cool.
Women often get a bad rap for having expensive tastes, being fiercely loyal to their luxury brands, and needing to dress with distinction, but in a way, guys are a more difficult consumer brand hierarchy to climb: with fewer acceptable brands to wear, if you want to fit in, it’s all about the money.
Like the Beetle’s measured unpretentiousness, the VW ad campaign mixed convention with the unexpected, blunt, and self-assured.
Pentagram suggested one main change: replacing the square dots over the lowercase i and j with rounded ones. This seemed minuscule, but would render the typeface “friendlier” — an important feature for a presidential candidate’s image.