Designed by Paul Renner and released in 1927, the geometric sans-serif Futura typeface quickly became one of the most influential typographic compositions of the 20th century. Renowned for its composition of geometric shapes, it has since been adopted by countless brands, used for headlines in an extensive number of tabloids and magazines, and has been incorporated into every possible style of marketing and advertising known to mankind; the average individual will almost certainly come across some form of print or digital media involving Futura in their daily life.
Unsurprisingly, I became known to Futura from of its use on the Channel 4 game show Countdown, on which it has featured in various guises since 1987.
This entire redesign has been heavily inspired by the Inter typeface — designed by Rasmus Andersson — which has become my favourite font family in recent years, particularly for body text, due to its sleekness and easy readability at all sizes.
Designed in 1927 by German typographer Paul Renner, Futura quickly became one of, if not the, most influential typographic projects of the 20th century. Its geometrical structure, demonstrating strong legibility, led to its use in an abundance of scenarios all over the world: tabloids and magazines, company logos and advertisements, government propaganda, and various others. Even a century later, it remains a prominent figure in the design and marketing industries, to such an extent that the average individual will almost certainly come across some form of print or digital media involving it in their daily life. Some of the high-profile brands that have featured Futura in their lifetime include IKEA, Nike, Shell, Absolut Vodka, Fox News, and HP — all completely different from one another.
Personal likes and dislikes with Futura
In the time I've been familiar with the Futura typeface, certain inconsistencies have caught my attention, which I've aimed to resolve in my iteration of this world-renowned antique of typography. Some of these are detailed below.
▸ Pointed apexes: as someone who likes consistency, the one feature of the Futura typeface I've never been fond of is the series of pointed apexes stemming from those characters possessing slanted strokes. For instance, in the Latin alphabet (part of the Basic Latin Unicode block), they are found in the lighter weights of the uppercase 'A', 'M', 'N', 'V' and 'W', as well as the lowercase counterparts of the latter two. I've never fully understood the purpose of the apexes, given they are absent from the Demi weight onwards. In my redesign, they have been excluded from all weights for consistency and to allow each of the flat-edged uppercase letters to sit level on the baseline.
▸ Standard width: from experimenting with Futura at different widths, a preference of mine is to use the typeface at 90% in the design material I use it in, which is possible to carry out when creating graphics in the Adobe Creative Cloud programs that I use. This facilitates both the uppercase and lowercase versions of the and 'C' and 'O' having a more circular formation as opposed to the elliptical shape they portray at the conventional width, namely in the Bold weight — which this redesign is drawn from.