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ABOUT

Jackson Burke

Born in San Francisco in 1908, Burke died in 1975. He studied at the University of California in Berkeley. From 1949 until 1963, he was type director for Mergenthaler-Linotype, succeeding C.H. Griffith. He developed the TeleTypesetting System (TTS) for magazines and designed some fonts for native American languages. He designed Trade Gothic (1948-1960), Majestic (1953-1956) and Aurora (1960).

Aurora is a newspaper type. Bitstream's digital clone is News 706, now simply called Aurora. Mac Mc Grew: Aurora is a newspaper typeface designed by Jackson Burke for Linotype in 1960, and is made only in 81/2-point, combined with its own italic or a choice of standard bold typefaces, as far as we can determine. Of course, its origins go back to the German grotesques, ca. 1928.

Mac McGrew: Majestic is a newspaper typeface produced by Linotype staff designers in 1955. It is similar to Corona, but was made in very few sizes.

Mac McGrew writes about Trade Gothic: Trade Gothic is a Linotype family of gothics designed by Jackson Burke, and is basically very nearly the same as News Gothic. An early typeface on that machine was Gothic No. 18, which in small sizes was like a nineteenth- century face, but in large sizes was essentially the same as News Gothic Condensed. In 1948, with the return to popularity of American gothics after European sans serifs had replaced them for a while, the small sizes were recut, to match the larger ones, and all were paired with Gothic No. 20, an adaptation of Alternate Gothic No.2. The following year more condensed versions of both weights were offered as Gothic No. 17 and 19. The bolder weight was very similar to Alternate Gothic No.1, but the lighter weight retained its round-sided design, unlike News Gothic Extra Condensed. As the popularity of these typefaces continued to grow, Linotype changed the name to Trade Gothic Condensed and Extra Condensed, with their bold typefaces, and in 1955 added Trade Gothic and Trade Gothic Bold in normal widths. The light or regular weight is virtually the same as News Gothic, but the bold weight has flat sides on its round letters, making it a wider version of Alternate Gothic, unlike the News Gothic Bold developed about the same time by Intertype and a little later by other sources. (In a 1977 Linotype specimen book, the names reverted to Gothic Nos. 17 to 20.) Trade Gothic Extended and Bold Extended were announced early in 1959; for this bold weight the flat sides finally gave way to round sides, more like the News Gothics from other sources. Compare Monotone Gothic, which is essentially a wide version of News Gothic. In 1962 the last of this family appeared as Trade Gothic Light and Italic, the upright typeface being similar to Lightline Gothic. Unfortunately, Trade Gothic regular had been called Light (in distinction from its bold mate) in some Linotype literature, leading to some confusion when the actually lighter version appeared later. Altogether it has been a very popular and widely used series. Compare News Gothic, Alternate Gothic, Monotone Gothic, Lightline Gothic, also Record Gothic.

Digital versions of Trade Gothic appeared at Adobe and Linotype. In 2008-2009, Akira Kobayashi and Tom Grace unified and extended Trade Gothic to Trade Gothic Next (17 styles). SoftMaker has Transfer Gothic and URW offered Tradus. Links to implementations: Trade Gothic (Adobe), Trade Gothic (Linotype), Trade Gothic Next (Linotype), Trade Gothic Next Soft Rounded (Linotype), News Gothic (Bitstream), News Gothic (ParaType), News Gothic (Tilde), News Gothic (URW++), News Gothic (Adobe), News Gothic (Linotype), Trade Gothic for Nike 365 (Linotype), Monotype News Gothic (Monotype), News Gothic No. 2 (Linotype), News Gothic SB (Scangraphic Digital Type Collection), News Gothic SH (Scangraphic Digital Type Collection), News Gothic EF (Elsner+Flake), News Gothic No 2 (URW++). In 2017, Lynne Yun (Monotype) made a layerable and colorable extension of Trade Gothic called Trade Gothic Display.

Fontshop link. Klingspor link. Linotype link. FontShop link.

View various versions of Jackson Burke's Trade Gothic. View digital versions of Trade Gothic. Another catalog. And another one.

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