Franklin Gothic

Info on my new font: Franklin Gothic (From Alice Shrum's blog)

Fraklin Gothic Characteristics:

Franklin Gothic is a single-weight, San Serif Font.
Although, it does has some interesting characteristics that are not typical of a Sans Serif.
Lowercase "a" - Two Story with terminal and final.
Lowercase "g" - Two Stories with a close loop and right facing ear.
(These characteristics above are not traditional characteristics of a Sans Serif font.)
Letter "k" - Leg extends from the arm.
Letter "c" - Has no barb (typical Sans Serif) and angular cuts to for the "C."
Number "4" - Connects at the top forming an apex.
Uppercase "Q" - Tail descends below baseline.
Uppercase "M" - Vertex extends to the baseline.
Uppercase "W" - Apex ascends to cap-height line.
Uppercase "G" - Has a spur that descends.
All apexes and vertexes have flattened joining points.

Franklin Gothic: Morris Fuller Benton

Designer: Morris Fuller Benton, Milwaukee, Wisconsin (Nov. 20, 1872–June 30, 1948)

Designs Franklin Gothic in 1902.

Classification: Realist/Transitional, Sans Serif

Transitional: They are relatively straight in appearance and have less line width variation than Humanist sans-serif typefaces. Transitional sans-serif is sometimes called "anonymous sans-serif" due to its relatively plain appearance.
Similar Fonts: Standard, Bell Centennial, MS Sans Serif, Highway Gothic, and Arial.

The typeface is one of over 200 typefaces designed by Benton.
Including: Benton, Broadway, and Canterbury Old Style.

The early 1900’s in America:
1900
* George Eastman makes first portable camera that's affordable and open to the public
1901
* President Mckinley is shot dead by Leon Czolgsz
* Electric typewriter is invented
* Teddy Roosevelt is elected President
1902
* The U.S. Navy installs the first radio telephone aboard ships
1903
* Henry Ford founds Ford Motor Co.
* Orville and Wilbur Wright take the first test flight in their plane at Kitty Hawk, NC
* The first World Series is held, Boston vs. Pittsburgh
1904
* The first comic book is invented
* George M. Cohan, the creator of many patriotic songs and musicals creates his first musical, Little Johnny Jones
* The answering machine is invented
1905
* The first Yellow Pages is invented
* The Jukebox is invented with 24 songs.

In 1902 American Type Founders’ release of Franklin Gothic introduced the young Morris Fuller Benton. Morris Fuller Benton (November 30, 1872 – June 30, 1948) was an influential American typeface designer who headed the design department of the American Type Founders (ATF), for which he was the chief type designer from 1900 to 1937. He graduated as a mechanical engineer from Cornell and went to work with his father in the newly established type design department of the American Type Founders Company, which his father (Linn Boyd Benton) had established. (Linn Benton was a type-founder and the inventor of the matrix-cutting machine, which revolutionized printing.)

When Morris Benton entered the American Type Founders he was facing a welter of typefaces available from the resources available to him, none of which he was particularly fond of, so instead Benton chose to originate his own new designs. He completed at least twenty-three series, approaching a design a year, the heart of American type design for the first half of the twentieth century. Benton designed more than 200 typefaces, ranging from revivals of historical models like ATF Bodoni, to adding new weights to existing faces such as Goudy Old Style and Cheltenham, and to designing original designs such as Hobo, Bank Gothic, and Broadway. Benton’s large family of related neogrotesque sans-serif typefaces, known as ‘gothics’ as was the norm at the time, includes Alternate Gothic, Franklin Gothic, and News Gothic. All were more similar to, and anticipated, later realist sans-serif typefaces such as Helvetica than did the other early grotesque types of his contemporaries.

Franklin Gothic was originally designed as a typeface with a single weight and only two variations in width. Franklin Gothic can be distinguished from other sans serif typefaces, as it has a more traditional two-story g. Other main distinguishing characteristics are the tail of the Q and the ear of the g. The tail of the Q curls down from the bottom center of the letterform in the book weight and shifts slightly to the right in the bolder fonts. Franklin Gothic has an extra bold weight with a combination of subtle irregularities, tapering of strokes near junctions, in its roman form. Franklin Gothic has several widths and weights including Franklin Gothic book, medium, demi, heavy, condensed, and extra condensed. In 1979 Victor Caruso at International Typeface Corporation increased the Franklin Gothic series to four photocomp weights, Light, Medium, Bold and Black, all with italics. In 1991 David Berlow added four widths, making up a complete new series released in 2007. On a survey of the top 100 commercial fonts, and is also listed as number 12 on the 100 best fonts of all time!