Futura

Font sample: Futura
Futura font sample
Sherbyte / Wikimedia Commons

Futura

Modern font using geometric forms

Informed by the sober and functional style of the Bauhaus movement, the Futura font was created by Paul Renner in 1928. It stands as a text book example of a sans-serif typeface. Although the design originated from a desire to express, in typographical terms, the aesthetic zeitgeist of an era, the font has long been considered a timeless masterpiece. The simple geometric forms from which Renner created the Futura letters displayed, in its early designs, a greater sense of unconventionality and underwent several phases of fine-tuning.

As an anti-traditional product of an age of engineering and machination, Futura dispensed with all forms of embellishment, exerting a provocative impact on the grounds of its massive stylistic departure from the then-customary Fraktur typeface. This is probably most apparent in the lower case letters t, u and j. As a result, the Nazis took exception to the font, viewing it as an expression of a decadent “cultural Bolshevism”. But no ideological campaign could hamper the long-term success of the typeface. A series of Futura variants were released in the years between 1950 and 1957.