ITC Franklin Gothic
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- Designer(s)
- Morris Fuller Benton, Victor Caruso
- Foundry(ies)
- ITC , Elsner+Flake , Adobe Systems
- Country of Origin
- United States
- Classification
- Sans Serif, Gothic
- Original Format
- Metal (Foundry)
- Tags
- 1900s, linear, modern, neutral, sans-serif
Background
Franklin Gothic can be distinguished from other sans serif typefaces, as it has a more traditional double-story g. Other main distinguishing characteristics are the tail of the Q and the ear of the g. The tail of the Q curls down from the bottom center of the letter-form in the book weight and shifts slightly to the right in the bolder fonts.
Franklin Gothic has an extra bold weight with a combination of subtle irregularities, tapering of strokes near junctions, in its roman form. Franklin Gothic has several widths and weights including Franklin Gothic book, medium, demi, heavy, condensed, and extra condensed.
Victor Caruso drew the multi-weight family for the International Typeface Corporation (ITC) in 1980. Caruso’s redrawing of Franklin Gothic for ITC consist of a slightly enlarged x-height and a moderately condensed lowercase alphabet. Other characteristics of this typeface consist of organic features that distinguish it from the geometric sans serifs. The font was originally released as two designs: one for display type and one for text. However, when Adobe commissioned the early digital fonts of ITC Franklin Gothic, the fonts were based on the display design, but characters were modified and spaced so they could also be used at small sizes. The idea was that the same font could be used to set type from tiny 6-point text to billboard-size letters. This digital interpretation became the standard for the digitized ITC Franklin Gothic family. This version has 4 weights, with complementary italics.
In 1991, ITC commissioned the Font Bureau in Boston to create condensed, compressed and extra compressed versions of ITC Franklin Gothic. Condensed versions were added by David Berlow. These fonts have 3, 2, 2 weight(s) respectively, with complementary italics except in extra compressed.
OpenType version supports ISO Adobe 2, Adobe CE, Latin extended characters. OpenType features include small caps, fractions, ligatures, lining figures, old style figure, ordinals, subscript/superscript.
It is also called ‘Gothic 744’ by Bitstream.
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