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News Gothic

News Gothic was designed by Morris F. Benton for ATF in 1908, in regular, condensed, and extra condensed widths, as part of his assignment to modernize the nineteenth-century gothics inherited from the foundry's predecessors.

Mac McGrew writes: News Gothic, with its much finer rendering, is part of what might be called a family of basic American gothics, for it is essentially a light version of Franklin Gothic. Lightline Gothic is still lighter and Monotone Gothic is wider, but all of them, with the variations of News and Franklin Gothics, are as closely related as are members of most other type families. However, the flat-sided extra condensed is more similar to the style of the Alternate Gothics.

These American gothics were pushed into obsolescence by the popularity of the German sans serifs, such as Futura and Kabel, in the 1930s. But they were rediscovered in the late 1940s, and made a strong come-back:

• Linotype introduced its comparable Trade Gothic family (1948, by Jackson Burke).
• Intertype cut News Gothic and News Gothic Bold in 1955. Intertype offered News Gothic Extended with bold extended in 1961.
• Ludlow expanded its Record Gothic family.
• ATF and Monotype added to their families of News Gothic. Bud Renshaw drew ATF's version of News Gothic Bold in 1958, while a third version of the same typeface was offered by Monotype. McGrew: ATF had drawings for News Gothic Italic as early as 1912, and reconsidered the typeface in 1965, but we have no record of its production. Monotype and Intertype brought out their own versions of italic, similar to each other except that the former has slightly greater slant.
• ATF introduced News Gothic Condensed Bold, by Frank Bartuska, in 1965, while Monotype and Intertype used the name News Gothic Bold Condensed for their earlier versions.
• Baltimore Type's "News Gothic" is actually Inland Gothic No.6, Mono 149, while "Balto Gothic," with Italic and Bold, is News Gothic.

So far for the metal typefaces. McGrew ends with this note: Compare Franklin Gothic, Lightline Gothic, Monotone Gothic, also Trade Gothic, Record Gothic. Also see Phenix, Jefferson Gothic.

A solid digital typeface family based on News Gothic is Font Bureau's Benton Sans (1993-2012, Cyrus Highsmith). See also News Gothic BT (Bitstream), News Gothic Bold (2017, Jordan Davies), and the one-weight Columnist JNL (2020, Jeff Levine).

A listing of various digital versions of News Gothic. More News Gothic-like typefaces.

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Morris Fuller Benton ⦿