SR1- Lucy Threlfo

LUCY THRELFO z3290208

The 'Century Gothic' typeface, created in 1991 by Sol Hess as a digital typeface, is one of my favourites. Highly geometric and simplified this typeface is based on the monotype 20th century typeface also designed by Sol Hess between 1936 and 1947. The design was also influenced by the geometric Sans Serif faces popular in the 1920's and 30's. 'Century Gothic' maintains most of the features from '20th Century' typeface however its 'x' height has been enlarged to ensure a better output from modern digital systems.

This typeface is classified as both Sans Serif and Geometric Sans and has, unlike '20 Century', a consistent stroke weight with no tapering resulting in unusually­ large counters. This is an advantage for 'Century Gothic', allowing it to reproduced and printed at small scales with little possibilities for error. It's also been found 'Century Gothic' uses less ink than other typefaces making it often cheaper to produce, though it has also been found to use more paper than the average typeface which somewhat negates this advantage. The Century Gothic font familiar includes regular, italic, bold and bold italic variations.

The letters 'a' and 'g' have been designed in the more modern single storey variations rather than traditional double storey. Also neither the uppercase or lower case 'u' have a descender and the tittles on the letters 'i' and 'j' are perfectly rounded and slightly larger than the stroke weight.­­­­ The descenders and ascenders on letters such as 't' and 'y' are approximately half the size of the 'x' height.

A very similar looking and commonly mistaken font to 'Century Gothic' is 'Avant Garde Gothic' which was designed by Herb Lubalin and Tom Carnase in 1970, based on the logo font of 'Avant Garde' magazine. However there are some obvious differences between the two typefaces. For instance, the tale of the 'Avant Garde' upper case 'q' is curved and covers the width of the counter while Century Gothic's is a simple diagonal line with equal lengths appearing in and out of the counter. Also the uppercase 'M' and 'W' of 'Avant Garde' are straight while 'Century Gothic's' flare out slightly, 'Avant Garde' also has slight tapering of the stroke weight, has tittles which are square and descenders on the lower case 'u'.

It is due to these subtle but key differences that I prefer 'Century Gothic' over the popular 'Avant Garde'.  'Century Gothic' works well as a heading typeface and for small bodies of text, making it commonly used in advertising. The uniformed large letters also make 'Century Gothic' a popular font choice for many children's books as well as language learning books. However, the typeface can become hard to read if used in large bodies of text due to the large number of negative spaces jarring the reading rhythm.

Sources:

'Avant Garde' (2011) Retrieved 2nd March 2012, from http://typedia.com/explore/typeface/avant-garde-gothic/

 

'Century Gothic' (2011) Retrieved 2nd March 2012, from http://www.ascendercorp.com/font/century-gothic/  

Shanks, N. (2009) 'Typeface Descriptions and Histories'. Retrieved 2nd March 2012, from http://web.nickshanks.com/typography/font-descriptions 

'Century Gothic' (2012) Retrieved 2nd March 2012, from http://www.identifont.com/similar?1N2

King, D. (2009) 'A brief history of Avante Garde'. Retrieved 2nd March 2012, from http://www.thinkingforaliving.org/archives/147

'Century Gothic' (2011) Retrieved 2nd March, from http://typedia.com/explore/typeface/century-gothic/revision/7/