| Date: 1927 Designer:
Paul Renner Foundry:
Bauer Location:
Frankfurt, Germany Current equivalent:
Bauer Futura ND See also:
Linotype Futura, Foundry Archityp Renner, ATF Spartan, MT Twentieth Century, Ludlow Tempo Technologies:
Metal (foundry)
Metal (machine)
Photosetting
Postscript / Opentype | | Famous for:
The first truly geometric sans serif. Applications: Advertising and Display Ubiquity:
Very widely used Category:
Sans Serif Geometric Stress: Vertical
Serifs: Sans Serif
| | Design History:
Although Renner was never a member of the Bauhaus, he established the German School of Advanced Book Printing in Munich where he recruited fellow type designers Georg Trump and Jan Tschichold. Widely adopted and copied throughout the 20th century, Futura's uppercase is based on classical Roman proportions and contains extensive modelling to achieve its exacting monoline appearance. Several alternative experimental figures for the lowercase exist in The Foundry's Archityp Renner, and the original production drawings are on display at the Fundición Tipográfica Bauer in Barcelona, Spain. Most commercial versions of Futura only have the lining numerals. | |  |
