Record Gothic

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Record Gothic [Robert H. Middleton] An American grotesk in the style of News Gothic (1908, Morris Fuller Benton) published by Ludlow in 1927. Its history according to Mac McGrew: Record Gothic was made on Ludlow before 1930, but originally only in small sizes and in regular weight and width. As such it was a copy of News Gothic, useful for small headings on ruled record sheets, hence probably the name. But typefaces such as News Gothic were by then being pushed aside by the new wave of sans serifs, inspired by Futura, and nothing was added to this series until the early 1950s, when typographers rediscovered the traditional American gothics. Then Ludlow added larger sizes of Record Gothic, and cut Record Gothic Condensed, followed by Record Gothic Extra Condensed; these were likewise copied from their News Gothic prototypes. In 1956, Robert H. Middleton, director of Ludlow's department of typeface design, began a series of original additions to this family, which eventually included twenty members. First came Record Gothic Condensed Italic and Record Gothic Bold; then Bold Extended and other variations as shown. Record Gothic Medium-Extended was an innovation; the name indicates semi-wide. It was that, and it retained general family characteristics, but it also had much of the appearance of the new grotesques such as Helvetica which were beginning to come over from Europe. Eventually there were four weights of Medium-Extended plus an italic, forming a family within a family. and making Record Gothic probably the only family available in five widths. Record Gothic Thinline Condensed was another innovation, on the order of a condensed version of Lightline Gothic. Record Gothic Bold Condensed and Heavy Condensed, done in 1969, show the influence of European grotesques. Most unusual is Record Gothic Bold Extended Reverse, which features white letters on a black band, complete with several optional endings for the band. And Record Gothic Offset, a reverse-reading typeface for titling photographs and marking electronic parts. (See Offset Faces.) All Record Gothic italics are cut for Ludlow's 17-degree italic matrices; most serifless italics slope about 8 to 12 de.grees. While not the greatest angle. 17 degrees is rather extreme, and results in some awkward character shapes. Nearly all versions of Record Gothic have as alternate characters a single-bowl lowercase g and a figure 1 without bottom serifs. Most also have fractions and percent mark available; a few have other alternate characters. Compare News Gothic and Trade Gothic families, Alternate Gothic, Helvetica. Digital revivals and descendants: A2 Record Gothic (2019, Henrik Kubel at A2). They write: In celebration of Record Gothic's eclectic history, we designed four related but independent styles: Slab, Mono, Stencil and Outline. Notary (2014, James Montalbano, Terminal Design). He writes: I followed the proportions of the Regular and Bold weights of the original Ludlow design. Many of the drawing decisions this led me to were at first shocking to my sensibilities. Rather than correct what I saw as errors I kept to it and developed these two weights as a beginning reference. I used these to then create very thin and heavy extremes and developed a carefully calibrated series of weights. Something the original never had. Relevant (2007, Michael Mischler and Nik Thoenen).	EXTERNAL LINKS MyFonts search Monotype search Fontspring search Google search INTERNAL LINKS Akzidenz Grotesk ⦿