Gotham: Barack Obama's favorite font

[OfficerJordan]

@addtek Made that comment 2 years ago when I was a dumb, ungrateful little bastard, haha.

[MisterBeaverSaysNo]

GOTTA MOVE DAT GEAR UP!

[TheiosXaris]

@MisterBeaverSaysNo

It's the kind of letter that an Engineer would make, after all.

[MartiW]

The emperors new clothes..Typography is old/ beaten. Who gives a fuck if the sign you're reading is Avenir or Helvetica, if the newspaper is composed with Times or Garamond.. The web has overtaken all of this shit, it's serif or sans serif now. What is Gotham doing for Obama now? Did it get him elected and was anybody talking about it before he was elected? I'm a designer, I have my favourite fonts but I'm not a font nerd/snob. The future of type is left ranged, and easily read on a screen!!!!

[TalesOfWar]

@MartiW You best look at things like @font-face and other font replacement techniques for the web. Plus, print design is NOT going anywhere for a long time yet, not to mention all those gadgets you use to surf the net will be using fonts to tell you their name, brand and model. I guess we should just use verdana for everything because it's easy to read on screen.

[xmarkoz]

This is a copy from Avenir of Frutiger

[pabini]

Design story of the sans-serif font Gotham.

[PenaltyKillah]

What a coincidental parallel to President Obama, born and raised outside the American mainland and largely considered a Washington outsider: "... It was born outside of type design, in some other world, and has a very distinct flavor from that."

[vpaulsmithjr]

@PenaltyKillah This font is American though…huge different.

[toothpik00]

I'd like to see the Port Authority Bus Terminal typeface over the top of the Gotham typeface just to see the difference(if any), because when you compare the two they look almost identical.

[thecorcorangroup]

Very interesting - thanks for sharing. It's great to see the 'hidden stories' behind those signs in New York that thousands pass every day. Who knew there was such a connection?

[turquoise770]

29 main st chester ny

[GiantsSB2010]

Barack ...Thank you . from America

[Thomaslewfilm]

production of this couldn't be worse. horrible lighting

[IsItBehindTheFridge]

thay are talking complete bollocks

[designtoad]

Gotham is a cool font.

Life is good.

[David40really]

Interesting how these designers openly talk about how they wander the city ripping off the designs they see other people have done. Then they cry like a stuck pig when someone wants to use what they created incorporating those ripped off design ideas. Guess there is no honor among thieves.

[LaloVarela]

I found it interestingly sad the way you view your little sandbox existence called life, one cannot put trademarks on everything it sees; the beauty of designing lies in the process , not in the find it self.

The free reinterpretation of life, art and even dreams is an essential feature to the cration of new media & thought.

[slaka16789]

Clearly you are not a graphic designer.

If you were you would understand that design comes from a man and is heavily influenced by his society. Why do you think designers in switzerland come up with completely opposite designs than Japanese come up with. yet, within the society they come up with similar things.

So, it would only make sense that they would re-create what they observe from daily life, and come up with new fonts like, GOTHAM.

[DarkAssasin619]

lolz pwned

[alwaysriteneverwrong]

No, that's the way it has to be. Or else the font would become ubiquitous.

[juglardelzipa]

ha ha ha, great man. spiekermann rules

[swissdots]

you should support artists who are making things you like.

[504nola]

we should support artists who are pawns of corporate pigs that try to make us buy useless shit we don't need? designers are just people who make material things stand out to us so we can buy them.

[frayquantum]

uh oh... I smell artist vs designer sh*tstorm coming......

tough luck kid, wait until you get to architect vs artist kinda stuff. you'll never win :D

[PenaltyKillah]

@swissdots That's a major drawback in online file sharing (and a exploitable side effect in this digital age). It has changed the mindset of the younger generation - and increasingly more so in everyone else - that it just doesn't make sense to pay for a copy of hard-earned material; not when it is as easy as borrowing sugar from your neighbor.

Has the work of designers, artists, and creators been devalued to nothing at all?

[canadianbacon11]

@swissdots If I had clients that supported me through my work, I would be more than happy to pay commercial price for a font. However, as a hobbyist who does everything for free and non-commercial uses, it's impossible to justify paying triple-digits for a font. The font market (unlike, say, music) doesn't exist for the end-user, it exists for designers. But not everyone who likes fonts is a professional designer! It's that disparity that is truly sad.

[forstudentpower]

It's not so bad - you can just pass the cost onto the client! XD

[EZA757]

@OfficerJordan, not really. It takes an amazing amount of time and patience to come up with a type face. I dk about you, but I wanna get paid for my work.

[khansaaab]

@OfficerJordan What you are calling "just a font" takes a lot of thought, time and effort to create. Sadly, most people do not realize that. Typography is underrated.

[musicolai]

@OfficerJordan If the font costs $100 and his hourly pay is $20, it should take him 5 hours to make it. It takes more than 5 hours to make a good font. So... $100 for a font is kind of cheap.

[faxxxy]

Anyone know what software he uses to view photos at 1:15

[XHashmeerX]

Looked like Adobe Bridge. I could be wrong because I hardly ever touch it personally.

[deezygn]

I was going to say either Bridge or Lightroom. Definately an Adobe product.

[bobbytroto]

Anyone have a copy of Gotham they want to accidentally email me?

[karenadepp]

i'm in love with Gotham right now. I can't stop using it

[SteveBuggy]

can i download it without paying for it?

[paralasalud]

no lol

[jbubbjw]

Who did the Obama campaign?

[applesrfun]

the guy in the beginning looks like sylar

[jbubbjw]

Design is a powerful thing.

[trissss]

Didn't John Edwards use the same font as well in his campaign ? That's where I remarked it (Gotham Ultra)

[bandman48]

Very interesting. I read about GOTHAM font in the 9-28-08 NY Times and O'Bama's use of it in his campaign. Google brought me here!

[rmb65]

did they alter the font from the Port Authority at all to make "Gotham" or did they just jack it completely. I'm not that good at seeing such minute differences in typefaces.

[emceay]

Futura is 90 years old? Suddenly I'm interested in type design.

[bonus12t]

omg this font is SO HOT right now

[AvenPhoenix]

What does this have to do with Barack Obama... Or anything for that matter?

[pdxbikerboy]

It's his campaign's font.

[Kni7es]

Uhhh... interesting? Forgive me if I don't really think all that much about fonts, but this whole thing seems kind of strange to me.

[Crazeedrummer06]

I want that font so bad but it costs money. I am too cheap haha