ATF Headline Gothic cries out to be used in headlines, and that is exactly how it was used after it was first created by American Type Founders in 1936 with newspapers in mind. It would be hard to imagine a better typeface for a shocking, front-page headline in a scene from an old black-and-white movie. With its all-caps character set, and its big, bold, condensed design, ATF Headline Gothic is the epitome of its name. “Extra! Extra!” The style of ATF Headline Gothic recalls the bold, condensed gothic display faces of the 19th century, but with more refinement in its details than many large types of the time (typically wood type). Its most recognizable trait is the restrained, high-waisted M, with short diagonal strokes that end with their point well above the baseline; this avoids the sometimes cramped look of a bold condensed M with a deep “V” in the middle, common in many similar headline faces. The digital ATF Headline Gothic comes in a single weight, all caps, like its predecessor, but offers two styles: one crisply drawn, and a “Round” version with softer corners, to suggest a more “printed” feel, reminiscent of wood type. Of course, in either style it includes a full modern character set, including symbols such as the Euro, Ruble, and Rupee, that didn’t exist in 1936.

Sporting broad, unadorned caps and just a dash of flair, ATF Wedding Gothic is like an engravers gothic at a black tie affair. It comes from the same tradition as other social gothics from the turn of the twentieth century, such as Engravers gothic and Copperplate. But where these are the faces of business cards and common announcements, ATF Wedding Gothic is a special occasion. Its swaying ‘R’ and ‘Q’, its characterful figures, and spritely-yet-sturdy insouciance make ATF Wedding Gothic well suited for tasteful engagements of all sorts. Yet there is much more here than the name implies. Originally offered long ago as metal type in a single, wide weight, this digital interpretation expands what was once a novelty design into a surprisingly versatile family of nine weights. An additional, narrower, standard width brings the count to eighteen fonts. From Thin to Medium, ATF Wedding Gothic retains the airy elegance of its source, while the heavier side of the family takes on an altogether different feel, more reminiscent of wooden poster type.

ATF Alternate Gothic is a new, significant digital expansion of Morris Fuller Benton’s classic 1903 type design. Originally available in one bold weight, the metal typeface came in three slightly different widths for flexibility in copy-fitting layouts.  ATF Alternate Gothic has impact at any size. Its letterforms are instantly familiar: Benton’s original metal type family was used throughout the 20th century in newspapers, magazines, and advertising, providing “strong and effective display” in a compact space. Monotype issued its own metal version for machine typesetting, and Alternate Gothic likely served as inspiration for Linotype’s ubiquitous Trade Gothic® Bold and Bold Condensed. ATF Alternate Gothic expands on the characteristics that perhaps made Trade Gothic so popular, providing a wider range of weights and widths to address the needs of today’s designers and technologies. The space-saving clarity of ATF Alternate Gothic brings readability to the world of advertising typefaces. With its finely graded range of ten weights, with four widths of each weight (40 fonts total), this extensive type family can be used to pack a lot into a narrow space, and the range makes it easy to create variations of an advertisement or announcement for different formats and media. The tall x-height and narrow proportions, combined with a relatively low waist and springy, tension-filled forms, make ATF Alternate Gothic strong and effective in display. All ten weights have been carefully spaced for readability, caps and lowercase work well together, while attention-grabbing all-caps settings are clear and never crowded, no matter how narrow.

ATF Poster Gothic is an expansion of a typeface designed in 1934 by Morris Fuller Benton for American Type Founders. The one-weight design was a slightly condensed display companion to Benton’s ubiquitous Bank Gothic family. This new family of aggressively rectilinear headline types expands the design’s possibilities, offering 30 fonts. The all-cap design sports square corners in the counters, creating tension between angular and curved details; this feature, and the generally rectangular shape of the whole alphabet, makes ATF Poster Gothic distinctive on the page or screen, while its relationship to Bank Gothic makes it seem somehow familiar. Vertical strokes on the C, G, J, and S, as well as on several of the numerals, are cut off at an angle, which suggest the curves those strokes might typically display if the characters were less boxy in design and more along the lines of late-19th-century headline faces. Certain weights also recall the style of lettering used on athletic team jerseys, television crime dramas, action & adventure movie titles, and engraved stationery. With three widths and five weights, ATF Poster Gothic is distinctive and versatile at the same time. The full family is also available in a “Round” version, with corners subtly rounded for a softer, more “printed” feel.

First introduced by the American Type Founders Company in 1906, Railroad Gothic was the quintessential typographic expression of turn-of-the-century industrial spirit—bold and brash in tone, and a little rough around the edges. A favorite for the plain speak of big headlines, Railroad Gothic quickly gained popularity among printers. Its condensed but robust forms were likely a source of inspiration for later families of industrial sans serifs. The design feels like a cleaned-up version of some earlier Victorian gothics, notable for their uneven proportions and awkward letterforms. ATF offered a number of sizes of Railroad Gothic as metal type, with cuts varying in design considerably from size to size. Creating this new digital version involved interpreting the characteristics of different sizes and making some aesthetic choices: where to retain the design’s familiar unstudied gawkiness, and where to make improvements. The new ATF® Railroad Gothic features a measured, harmonious interpretation of the original, and has been extended with four new weights (each bolder than the last). The heaviest weights are carefully designed to keep counters open, no matter how dense the overall effect may be, maintaining legibility at any display size. This contemporary rendition of a historic American design boasts a full Latin character set, including glyphs undreamed-of in the heyday of railroads.

ATF Franklin Gothic® A new take on an old favorite Franklin Gothic has been the quintessential American sans for more than a century. Designed by Morris Fuller Benton and released in 1905 by American Type Founders, Franklin Gothic quickly stood out in the crowded field of sans-serif types, gaining an enduring popularity. Benton’s original design was a display face in a single weight. It had a bold, direct solidity, yet conveyed plenty of character. A modern typeface in the tradition of 19th-century grotesques, Franklin Gothic was drawn with a distinctive contrast in stroke weight, giving it a unique personality among the more mono-linear appearance of later geometric and neo-grotesque sans-serif types. Franklin Gothic has been interpreted into a series of weights before, most notably with ITC Franklin Gothic. But as the original type was just a bold display face (later accompanied by a few similarly bold widths and italics), how Benton’s design is expanded to multiple weights and styles as a digital type family can vary significantly. Benton designed several gothic faces that harmonize with one another, including Franklin Gothic, News Gothic, and Monotone Gothic, that can serve as models for new interpretations of his work. With ATF Franklin Gothic, Mark van Bronkhorst looked to Benton’s Monotone Gothic—originally a single typeface in a regular weight, and similar to Franklin Gothic in its forms—as the basis for lighter styles. ATF Franklin Gothic may appear familiar given its heritage, but is a new design offering a fresh take on Benton’s work. The text weights are wider and more open than some previous Franklin Gothic interpretations, and as a result are quite legible as text, at very small sizes, and on screen. ATF Franklin Gothic maintains the warmth and the spirit of a Benton classic while offering a suite of fonts tuned precisely for contemporary appeal and utility. The 18-font family offers nine weights with true italics, a Latin-extended character set, and a suite of OpenType features. Download the PDF specimen for ATF Franklin Gothic.

A revival of one of the popular wooden type fonts of the 19th century, suitable for text or display, short descenders, tall ascenders, the narrow, italic version, completing the Gothic Special family of 5 fonts in total, sans serif.

A revival of one of the popular wooden type fonts of the 19th century, suitable for text or display, short descenders, tall ascenders, the narrow, italic version, completing the family of 6 fonts in total, sans serif.

Futurist italic typeface from the programming era, Plau is a sans-serif with rounded corner personality and interestingly deliberate lettershapes. Comfortable in headlines, reads surprisingly well in longer passages of text. Includes the following OpenType features: OT All Small Caps, Small Caps, Fraction, Proportional/Tabular Oldstyle and lining figures, subscript and superscript numbers.