A few months ago, there was a lot of discussion about art and beauty; context and concept, and myriad related philosophical thoughts. Those posts collectively serve to establish important distinctions in regards to evaluating art. Context exists independently from concept; and beauty exists independently from both of these. Graham illustrated this quite lucidly in his Context and Concept post (linked to above). This post can be considered a reinforcement of that; a part two, perhaps; or simply the same conclusion arrived at via a different path. My defense for doing this is that one cannot be too rigorous—and because I really find this fascinating and I want to write about it.

As a graphic designer, I’ve really come to love and appreciate type. I’d urge you to not shut down your brain and leave right now (if the opening paragraph hasn’t scared you away, that is). My goal is to only discuss type that you’ve likely seen somewhere, and faces which are clearly distinctive from each other. As much fun as I have discussing the minute differences between Helvetica and Arial—to say nothing of Monotype Grotesque—there is a time and a place for that sort of nonsense, and it is not here. Not now, anyway.

Like with all sorts of objects which fill our life, it’s easy to take for granted the fact that someone pored over every stroke and terminal of every character of every typeface, ever. That’s a lot of people—and a lot of poring. The most commonly used faces (some would say overused) are common because they work so well, and they work so well because of all sorts of technical details about stroke weight and proportion were carefully evaluated and tweaked by people who enjoy that sort of thing.

More importantly, the various weights, proportions and letterforms convey entirely different pieces of information—entirely different concepts—than the details surrounding the typefaces themselves—their context. It is much easier to demonstrate, and it’s more fun to look at the actual typefaces, anyway, so let’s jump in.


des. Aldo Novarese

[Note: Originally was Microgramma. Eurostile is the same typeface, essentially, but with lower case and special characters. The original Microgramma was upper case only.]

Eurostile is the type of The Future. Anywhere you look, if someone is trying to convey science and technology and futuristicness, they do so with Eurostile extended. It’s progressive enough to be the future, yet not so flamboyant or outrageous as to look like a specific decade’s cheesy version of the future. The only problem? Eurostile has been the Face of the Future for a really long time.

In the 1960’s, Microgramma extended was shown being used by Starfleet as part of their interior design—including signs on the Enterprise—making it the assumed typeface of choice for the 23nd Century. A hundred years further in the future, when the Enterprise D came around, they were still using it in their technical manuals (although the computer interfaces were updated with something less legible). In the 1970’s, NASA was using Eurostile on their space ships—meaning that illustrations depicting spaceship concepts of the 70’s version of the future were using it, too. In the 1980’s, Los Angeles circa 2019 was using it in Blade Runner, and Nissan used it on the dashboard of my ‘87 Pulsar. In the 1990’s, the temporally undefined future-parody world in The Fifth Element was putting it on their technology. And today, despite all that abuse, we still think it looks futuristic.

Naturally, Eurostile was designed in 1952.


des. Morris Benton

Bank Gothic is less “futuristic” and more “actioney”. It looks sleek and technological, but it’s a little too distinctive for widespread use in your futuristic spaceships. Besides, to use Bank Gothic, you have to have some kickassery going on. What about using it in conjunction with the slo-mo kung fu fest of The Matrix? Check. How about on the computers Mr. Bond uses in Goldeneye? Affirmative. And in the slaughterhouse that is the video game Hitman? Bring it on.

These action movies and games are just contemporary or futuristic enough to get away with using the “technological” aspect of Bank Gothic, but also they’ve got enough stylized violence to warrant taking advantage of its “action” side.

Despite this heat-packing, 1337 hax0rz personality, it was designed in 1930.

There are plenty of other faces which look new and sleek, but were actually borne of the geometric sensibilities of the bauhaus era of design. Futura and DIN are two more examples. These faces embody something which is completely different in concept than the context of their creation. The context is the date, the designer, and the design movement from which it arose. Important, certainly—but the concepts they invoke today are something completely different.

By now, you might be suspecting that if there are typefaces designed 80 years ago which look futuristic, perhaps there are some that were designed recently, but look old? Insomuch that typography shares and remixes ideas for letterforms, inspiration comes from everywhere, and so it makes sense that we would see contemporary (or digitized) faces that mimic old forms. So to answer you question: yes.


des. Christian Schwartz

Neutraface was modeled after the display faces used in conjunction with Richard Neutra’s architecture. Neutra, of the international and modern styles, had a typeface to match his buildings. The modern san serif geometry and extended ascenders practically beg to be used in describing typical 50’s gadgets like “air-conditioning” and “television set”. In exactly the same way Eurostile was The Future, Neutra’s face was not. It is the typeface of an alternate 50’s future, decorated with cantilevered wings and rocket ship nose cones. It’s jetpacks and clunky robots; spinning reels of magnetic tape and sparkling, brand-new concrete stack interchanges. It’s all the technology that went away when real technology progressed.

Despite it’s promise of yesterday’s World of Tomorrow, Neutraface was designed in 2002.


des. Carol Twomby

Arguably, the original Trajan was designed by Roman sculptors, when they used something like it at the base of Emperor Trajan’s column, completed in 113. It is all capitals, developed as the written form of latin, and based on simple geometric principles: the triangle, square, and circle. Due to its masculine build and classical proportions, Trajan is serious, strong, and stoic. It’s used on the news, when pundits discuss important world politics. It is used on humanities and history textbooks. It was strength of Jesus carrying the cross in the logotype of The Passion of the Christ.

It didn’t appear on the scene until 1989.


des. Giambattiista Bodoni

Bodoni (the guy)’s greatest achievement was designing Bodoni (the typeface). He perfected the manufacturing of lead type to the point where extremely thin hairlines could be reproduced reliably. This was a huge step forward in printing, because such fine detail had never before been seen. His design aesthetic was one of powerful simplicity: prim hairline serifs on the end of each letter, and no unnecessary swaths.

The typeface was designed in 1798. If you look at it, it certainly looks like a typeface designed in 1798. It’s polite and stiff—just the sort of thing you would expect at the turn of the 18th century. No surprise there. So what’s the catch?

Bodoni—and all similar faces with thin, delicate serifs—were representative of maturing printing technology. In fact, it was so groundbreaking at the time that everyone just knew it was the look of the future. They were so confident that these beautiful faces would endure for the next few hundred years, that they just went ahead and called them all “modern”.

Yes, when designers talk about using a “modern” typeface, they’re actually talking about using one of the oldest, most antique looking, nonmodern typefaces there are. In fact, it gets even more ironic: because Bodoni has such fine serifs, it’s actually a very poor choice for something that is being reproduced only on a computer monitor, where it must conform to the pixels of the screen. For websites and ebooks and all that great “modern” technology we have today, it’s considered a poor design choice to use the “modern” typefaces. They couldn’t be more antiquated.

Finally, there are typefaces which are so common, they are almost transparent. They have connotations associated with them too, of course—again completely independent from their context.


des. Hermann Zapf

Optima is somewhat like Trajan in that it’s classical and strong, but it also has a fresh design element not seen before its inception: the pseudo-serif, or flare. Technically, Optima is a san serif face, since it doesn’t have actual serifs sticking off the letters, like Bodoni (or Times, etc). But the slight outward tapering of the letters hint at the beginning of a serif, and since they’re clearly not squared off like Eurostile or Neutraface, they can be considered half-way between serif and sans.

Optima is also like Trajan in that Zapf was all about the proportions and design of the Roman capitals, and so Optima’s caps have very similar forms. The combination of careful, sculpted pseudo-serifs and large, open, and strong Romanesque capitals make for a unique feel. Optima says classical and trustworthy, but it also says advanced. Maybe not cutting edge, but certainly not lagging behind, either. It straddles the line between classic and contemporary, and is equally comfortable in either role. To the typographically ignorant, it might be obvious that Optima wasn’t designed in the 100’s along side the Roman caps, but neither was it slapped together in the past few years.

In fact, it shares the era with the quintessentially futuristic Eurostile; Optima was completed in 1955.



des. Claude Garamond

Known for it’s soft, flowing terminals and consistency across characters, Garamond is often the default choice for body copy among designers who don’t want Times but don’t feel like doing a lot of research and experimentation to find something else, either. It’s like the Helvetica of serifed typefaces. It’s timeless, never inappropriate, completely unnoticed by non-typographers, and yet still not bland. It just works.

All these characteristics define any good face, of course. This is why I consider Helvetica to be a good one, even though I also consider it bland depending on the application. You would expect more contemporary typefaces such as Optima to have timeless beauty. After hundreds of years of experimenting with typographical design, we ought to know a few things about typographical aesthetics, and legibility and its limitations. What you don’t necessarily expect is this same contemporary refinement in a face that appeared just a few decades after the printing press itself.

Garamond is about 500 years old, having been cut sometime in the early 16th century.

In light of these examples, the point should be clear: context is nothing; concept is everything. As Graham also wrote, the context exists only to drive the concept. In fact, the only example I can think of in typography where the context might be important in itself would be in a period drama in film. If a movie is set in England, 1880 (this would be the concept, anyway) it’s probably a good idea to go for authenticity and not use, say, Times New Roman on the storefronts. In this case, it behooves one to know when Times New Roman was first cut (1932), and select a more appropriate face that would have been in use at the time.

But aside from that rather specific example, there’s no reason to consider the year or movement from which a typeface arose; more important is to recognize what the typeface says via its design. And even more important than that: when looking at the face itself, it is almost impossible to tell when it was made. We can talk about the international-style characteristics of Neutraface, but that’s no guarantee it was designed during this period. Garamond has a great deal of refinement, and is 500 years old. Optima has the same degree of refinement and it is only 50 years old.

Not only is concept everything and context nothing, you can’t even infer one from the other. If I say, “think of what a typeface designed at the turn of the 20th century looks like”, you could imagine either the graceful classicism of Centaur, or the very contemporary looking Akzidenz Grotesk. Both are from the turn of the century, but without having studied type, you just wouldn’t know.

It’s all about the concept. It helps to know the origins and development of typefaces, but to effectively drive the work, you have to know the concepts they suggest—and a typeface’s concept rarely aligns with its context. Of course, none of the typefaces presented here are inherently better or worse than any others. I’ve used them all, myself. Rather, it depends on what the design requires. It depends on the concept.

-Ted