Designed in 1904 by Morris Fuller Benton for the American Type Founders company, Franklin Gothic was originally conceived as only one weight. Over the next several years, the ATF family was expanded to include italic, condensed, condensed shaded, extra condensed and wide variants. For some unknown reason no light or intermediate weights were ever created. In 1979, under license from ATF, International Typeface Corporation created four new weights ? Book, Medium, Demi and Heavy ? in roman and italic versions. Designed by Victor Caruso, these new designs matched the pure characteristics of the original Franklin Gothic, adhering closely to the subtle thick and thin pattern of the original ATF typeface while featuring a slightly enlarged lowercase x-height. This increased x-height ? which improved the typeface's appearance and readability ? and the availability of larger family made ITC Franklin Gothic a preferred choice when setting large blocks of sans serif text. Franklin Gothic was named by Morris Fuller Benton in honor of Benjamin Franklin, whom Benton greatly admired for his significant contributions to American history and culture, and to printing in particular.
Franklin Gothic Book Franklin Gothic Book Italic Franklin Gothic Demi Franklin Gothic Demi Cond Franklin Gothic Demi Italic Franklin Gothic Heavy Franklin Gothic Heavy Italic Franklin Gothic Medium Franklin Gothic Medium Cond Franklin Gothic Medium Italic
Designers
Victor Caruso
Copyright
ITC Franklin Gothic is a trademark of The International Typeface Corporation which may be registered in certain jurisdictions. Portions copyright Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.
1252 Latin 1 1250 Latin 2: Eastern Europe 1251 Cyrillic 1253 Greek 1254 Turkish 1257 Windows Baltic Mac Roman Macintosh Character Set (US Roman) 869 IBM Greek 866 MS-DOS Russian 865 MS-DOS Nordic 863 MS-DOS Canadian French 861 MS-DOS Icelandic 860 MS-DOS Portuguese 857 IBM Turkish 855 IBM Cyrillic; primarily Russian 852 Latin 2 775 MS-DOS Baltic 737 Greek; former 437 G 850 WE/Latin 1 437 US