Gotham: Barack Obama's favorite font

Can the right font make the difference in a media-driven election? Barack Obama's campaign is increasingly using the font Gotham for their "Change We Can Believe In" banners and other material. In this outtake from Gary Hustwit's 2007 documentary "Helvetica", type designers Jonathan Hoefler and Tobias Frere-Jones discuss the creation of Gotham. The font was originally commissioned for GQ Magazine, and the list of qualities they were looking for then sounds surprisingly Obama-esque now. http://www.helveticafilm.com/blog

• Category

  News & Politics

[swissdots]

you should support artists who are making things you like.

[emceay]

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

[fivedaysandcounting]

If you honestly believe that then you are not a designer.

[Nicolai Marcelline Olesen]

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.

[Theios Haris]

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

[OfficerJordan]

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

[Siegfried MCHammerCock]

GOTTA MOVE DAT GEAR UP!

[khansaaab]

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.

[Paul Smith]

This font is American though…huge different.

[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.

[Martin Whelan]

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!!!!