Brief 2 - Design Principles - What is a Book?: Information on Famous Fonts

Obama's Hope Campaign

The 2008 Obama presidential campaign is arguably one the most successful and famed marketing campaigns ever, for a number of reasons. Most notably was Obama’s use of the internet and social media to rally supporter and spread messages of policy – something that was considered an innovation at the time.

In what are often considered the most iconic imageries of the campaign, are the set of posters designed by artist and graphic designer Shepard Fairey. H & FJ font Gotham was responsible for delivering the messages of hope, progress and change featured on the posters to millions worldwide.


Futura


On September 12, 1962, President John F. Kennedy made history in his famous “We choose to

go to the moon” speech. 7 years later, on July 20, 1969, Appollo 11 landed safely on the moon and Neil Armstrong became the first man to step foot on the lunar surface. The lunar module of Apollo 11 (like the other moon missions) carried a special plaque left behind in a record of man’s achievements. Fittingly, Futura in all-caps was chosen as the font of choice to communicate this through NASA’s declaration of policy and purpose.

VAG Rounded

If you’re a designer, chances are you’re reading this on Mac. Look down at your keyboard, ever wondered what font those keys use?

VAG Rounded was originally commissioned specifically by Volkswagen in 1978, who at the time had recently merged with Audi to form the “Volkswagen Audi Group” (VAG). In light of the merger, VW sought to re-brand the company, organisation and existing network of dealerships. At the time Audi used “Times” while VW used “Futura”. A new font was needed that was not a traditional Serif, nor a typical Sans Serif. Rounded Sans Serifs were relatively rare at the time, particularly anything that could be used for the standard needed for brand work. VW commissioned the work to independent design studio Sedley Place, who are credited for the typeface. Since then, VAG Rounded has seen frequent use including on all Apple keyboard products since 2007.


Transport

Transport is a sans serif typeface first designed for road signs in the United Kingdom. It was created between 1957 and 1963 by Jock Kinneir andMargaret Calvert as part of their work as designers for the Department of Transport's Anderson andWorboys committees. Before its introduction, British road signs used the capitals-only. All aspects of signing were investigated and tested, initially on the Preston bypass (1958, now part of the M6 motorway), before their introduction on the (London–Yorkshire) M1 motorway a year later. The committee looked at examples from other European countries as well as the USA but Kinneir and Calvert found them somewhat harsh and unsatisfactory. Instead, they developed a more rounded typeface with distinctive tails to 'a', 't', and 'l', and bar-less fractions, all of which helped legibility.

Only a limited number of symbols are available in Transport, mainly those commonly used in road signs, such as apostrophes, the pound signand certain vulgar fractions such as ½ and ⅓. Various diacritics are also available, for use in languages other than English, such as Welsh andIrish

London Underground

The typeface was commissioned in 1913 by Frank Pick, Commercial Manager of the Underground Electric Railways Company of London (also known as 'The Underground Group'), as part of his plan to strengthen the company's corporate identity, and introduced in 1916. Pick specified to Johnston that he wanted a typeface that would ensure that the Underground Group's posters would not be mistaken for advertisements; it should have "the bold simplicity of the authentic lettering of the finest periods" and belong "unmistakably to the twentieth century". In 1933, The Underground Group was absorbed by the London Passenger Transport Board and the typeface was adopted as part of theLondon Transport brand. The font family was originally called Underground. It became known as Johnston's Railway Type, and later simply Johnston. It comes with two weights, heavy and ordinary. Heavy does not contain lower-case letters. Johnston (or Johnston Sans) is a humanist sans-serif typeface designed by and named after Edward Johnston. It is well known for its use by Transport for London Johnston's former student Eric Gill also worked on the development of the typeface, which was later to influence his own Gill Sans typeface, produced 1928–32.

Features of the font are the perfect circle of the letter O and the use of a diagonal square dot aboveminuscule letters i and j and for the full stop. Commas, apostrophes and other punctuation marksare also based on the diagonal square dot.