I am doing a revival and massive extension of the 1930s classic Bank Gothic, for Google Fonts. Because of the tight timeline, I need help! I am interested in getting maybe one more person working on it. There will be several of us, and work is already well under way. I have already shared this several places, but somehow missed TypeDrawers!
- weight, width, contrast and slant axes
- 3 x 3 weight and width masters
- ~ 1200 glyphs, extended Latin, extended Cyrillic, small caps
- all-new lowercase (unlike original Bank Gothic)
- work in FontLab VI (some experience required)
This is a good opportunity to do a decent paying type design gig for four months, creating a typeface that is likely to get used everywhere. Bank Gothic is an eternally popular typeface. Saw it again last night in the new Spider-man film
More details here:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/13KDvO285FbC27okr7aZK09c5IlpodCphvwTC_9DmGDQ/edit?usp=sharingDeadline: noon PST Monday
Comments
I have some decently qualified applicants, so it’s looking promising.
Note for those who are unfamiliar with the history: unlike, say, Monotype and Linotype, American Type Founders went bankrupt in 1993. There is no direct successor for the design lineage and intellectual property, although recently some fine folks have taken up the American Type Founders name anew and are applying it to the “American Type Founders Collection.”
I have always had a particular interest in type from ATF’s heyday, and ATF in particular. I first considered a Bank Gothic revival at least 15 years ago, even before a wave of proprietary, retail Bank Gothic revivals. So I am glad to be doing it now.
Are you sure about that? It is my understanding that Kingsley/ATF bought the ATF IP rights and as of about fifteen years ago were still collecting royalties. Prospective licensees had to apply through their attorney at the time.
Kingsley/ATF stopped doing/selling type in 1993 when they shut down the type foundry and sold all its hard assets. I gather that at some point they made some efforts to later claim trademark rights, but as they were not using the trademarks themselves, I gather that is more than a little dubious (in US law, under the Lanham Act). Failure to use the trademark, with no intention to use it, causes loss of the trademark.
Given that later the trademark on American Type Founders / ATF itself even lapsed and was claimed by another entity, that makes me even more dubious about Kingsley/ATF holding specific typeface trademarks. But I will freely admit that I am not a lawyer, and at this point in the discussion am getting out of my depth in this area.
In any case the actual name for this revival is still TBD! I have been batting around some ideas, but it is far from finalized. “Libre Bank Gothic” (or Bank Gothic Libre) is just one of many ideas, but I am kind of “eh” about it. It’s ok, not exciting. Any uncertainty about trademark status would certainly make other options more appealing.
I don’t know all the details, but trademarks for formerly trademarked ATF names are today claimed as trademarks by everybody and their dogs. I see some claimed by Monotype, some by Linotype, and many by all sorts of players. This despite some attempts at licensing from Kingsley/ATF. This suggests to me that at least some of the former ATF trademarks lapsed.
In the matter at hand, do a web search on the phrase "Bank Gothic is a trademark" and one gets a bunch of different, conflicting, results. Most commonly are references to brands/companies run by Mark Solsburg (GroupType, or its parent company Grosse Pointe Group LLC). Elsner + Flake claim Bank Gothic as a trademark as well. And ParaType credits Kingsley/ATF as the trademark holder. Pretty chaotic! (IIRC, three competing/contradictory trademark claims for Bank Gothic can be found on MyFonts.)
All of this was during the brief interlude when Linotype fonts were not for sale on MyFonts.com. At the time of Morris Sans’s release, IIRC, the Elsner+Flake digitization of Bank Gothic was a top-20 family in MyFonts. I was doubly sad that Morris Sans couldn’t be called Bank Gothic and couldn’t be sold (yet) on MyFonts, because I thought that it might have done very well for Linotype at that time. As it turned out, I don’t think that the fonts got all that much use. But I’m sure your Var fonts will do much better! I look forward to seeing the results.
And thanks, @Dan Reynolds for the tip on which trademark is current. I was certainly assuming there was a good chance that *one* of the claimed trademarks was current, even if it wasn’t obvious whether or which one right off. Mostly I was suggesting that it seemed likely that the original wasn’t current any more.
A search at the USPTO (and/or its EU equivalent) would doubtless be helpful if one wanted to sort that out. But we will likely just use a different name. Suggestions welcome!
- Ad Lib -> Adelaide
- Balloon -> Bassoon
- Bauhaus -> Bahamas
- Benguiat ->Bangkok
- Bookman -> Brooklyn
- Copperplate -> CopperPot
- Dom Casual -> DawnCastle
- Eras -> Erie
- Franklin Gothic -> Frankfurt Gothic
- Mistral -> Mystical
- New Baskerville -> Nebraska
- Tiffany -> Timpani
- Umbra -> Umbrella
- VAG -> Vogue
So you could follow suit with Bunk Gather, or Band Gotham, or Bake Coptic, or...And, FWIW, the original design that Tobias Frere-Jones did for Martha Stewart Living magazine was actually named Benton Gothic.
When it came time to expand the design for retail release, Cyrus Highsmith did a pretty thorough overhaul. The differences are subtle; I can usually tell the difference, though many may not be able to. So I imagine the decision to release as Benton Sans was partly to keep the two versions distinct.
I think it’s truly a pity it was not much considered.
About Thomas' proposal: at first I was intrigued, but I lack some of the required skills (enough experience in FontLab VI and experience with app interpolation/variable fonts) and I am not attracted to the variable fonts, or to families with so many weights and variants.
But since I have just decided to quit my job (for personal reasons, I did not have much choice) and I have decided that I will partly concentrate my future activity on type design, I hope a similar opportunity will arise. Of course, I’ll start pestering around for collaborations when I'll be free.
Definitely don't get it but await your explanation, @Thomas
Gothic Science on the other hand...