PARSONS - FRANKLIN GOTHIC

Franklin Gothic is a font originally developed by a man named Morris Fuller Benton in 1904. Benton was the chief type designer for the American Type Founders (ATF) from 1900 to 1937 and in that time produced approximately 221 type designs including Franklin Gothic. Franklin Gothic was inspired by the sans serif fonts being created in the late 1800s by foundries like Berthold Types(1958) who created Akzidenz Grotesk in 1896 and mimicked by other foundries.

Primarily a newspaper and advertisement font, Franklin Gothic was very popular in the early 1900s but toward the middle of the 1920s it began to fall out of favor and out of mind. It wasn’t until the 1950s that the font began to resurface among information communicators. Notably, in 1980 International Typeface Corporation (ITC) commissioned Victor Caruso to reinvent the classic Franklin Gothic. Out of this renovation Franklin Gothic gained four new weights in roman and italic: book, medium, demi and heavy. Later, in 1991 a suite of 12 condensed/compressed versions were designed by David Berlow.

Demand for Franklin Gothic fonts was steady through the late 1900s but the sporadic variety of fonts left modern designers wanting more. It was David Berlow who rose to the challenge and teamed up with ITC to rework the ITC Franklin Gothic font family into what is and will be known as ITC Franklin. ITC Franklin font family increased to 48 fonts in its first phase known as ITC Franklin Type, which was released in 2008. The next phase, ITC Franklin Text is currently under development but should see release in the near future.

For over 100 years the Franklin Gothic font family and its descendants have captured the hearts, imaginations, and attention of thousands of readers and with the newest designs coming on the horizon it appears that it will continue to impact and mold the society we live in for many years to come.

CONCEPT; Well this is where it gets hard I suppose, I think since this font and the person the font is named for have strong ties to the newspaper business I would try to model this to be a type of special edition of the Pennsylvania Gazette? Drawing on existing copies for inspiration...Comments?