Research point: Magazine typography study

This research asked me to explore lesser used characters and also to use the identifont website to identify the typeface from a magazine I have to hand.

Below I selected some of my most recently used fonts and added the pangram and some extra characters ion the top row to see how they worked with the main alphabet, its interesting to see the similarity and the differences in their construction, the @ symbol and ampersand being the two that seem to offer the most unique shapes.

I read an interesting book about type (just my type by Simon Garfield) and I’m sure I remember one of the type designers talking about the ampersand being the character that showcases the artform of type design. They really do vary and the curved shapes take on a life of their own. I imagine they must really enjoy designing that character.

I found a copy of Imagine fx magazine, and started to go through the identifont process, I answered many questions before I was confident that it had found the most likely fonts.
Questions like “What style are the diagonal strokes of the upper-case ‘K’?” and What shape is the dot on the ‘?’ it found the font very quickly, and luckily I had it on my computer the font was Gotham.

Here is the isolated Gotham font for comparison.

Gotham is also recognisable as the font that Barack Obama used in his Hope campaign.

The Design Behind Color Rush – Milwaukee Art Museum Blog

Gotham Knight

Its a great looking strong typeface, with many variations, so great and this is no surprise that DC comics also used to use it, Gotham being the city that the DC character Batman has sworn to protect.

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