Daytona font family

Article
03/30/2022

Overview

Inspiration for the Daytona™ typeface family came from a desire to provide the best fonts for use in televised sporting events. Jim Wasco, the typeface’s designer, drew the design as sturdy squared letters based on humanist shapes and proportions. Letters were designed with legibility in mind, kept narrow for economy of space, and inter-character spacing was established for easy reading.

The Daytona typeface got its moniker from the famous Daytona Speedway racetrack. “I wanted to name the typeface something related to sporting competitions,” Wasco explains. “I’ve always had an appreciation for racing cars. Being the type nerd that I am, I love the graphics, logos, large numbers and advertisements. The name Daytona jumped out at me as being the perfect name for this design.”

“I designed the letterforms to ensure high levels of legibility,” says Wasco. “For example, the lowercase l has a curved foot terminal and the cap I has “serifs” to distinguish the two designs.” An alternate two-story g has been added to the roman as an option for a more legible design in situations that call for the need to distinguish the g from the figure nine in applications such as automotive user interface designs and displays. The default lowercase a in the Italic is a more legible two-story form, however, an alternate single-story a has been added to give the user the choice to use a more traditional italic script form. While efficient typographic communication was basic to the design brief, the Daytona family was also drawn to be a friendly, approachable design. Its rounded corners, open counters and simple characters shapes invite reading and foster memorability.

When asked about the potential uses of Daytona, Wasco replied, “of course the family can be used for all sports related typesetting. It would also, because of its high level of legibility, be a good design for display usage in a user interface. This includes everything from automotive digital dashboards to mobile phones and GPS devices.” Wasco also drew a suite of condensed designs that are ideal for both print and on screen applications where space is at a premium. While televised sporting events may have initially been his initial target, the design considerations Wasco incorporated into the Daytona family also enable it to perform well in a wide variety of other video and on screen environments. – fonts.com

In 2019 we reviewed the set of fonts provided with Office identifying stylistic gaps. The result of that effort was the addition of over a hundred new fonts, including classics like Avenir Next LT Pro and Walbaum along with contemporary designs like The Hand, Sagona and Modern Love. These new fonts are available in most Office applications and have been used in a range of new templates.

	Description
File name	daytona.ttf daytonabold.ttf daytonabolditalic.ttf daytonaitalic.ttf daytonapro-cond.ttf daytonapro-condlight.ttf daytonapro-light.ttf daytonapro-lightitalic.ttf
Styles & Weights	Daytona Daytona Bold Daytona Bold Italic Daytona Italic Daytona Pro Condensed Daytona Pro Condensed Light Daytona Pro Light Daytona Pro Light Italic
Copyright	Copyright © 2011-2014 Monotype Imaging Inc. All rights reserved
Designers	Jim Wasco
Font vendor	Monotype Corporation
Script Tags	dlng:'Latn' slng:'Latn'
Code pages	1252 Latin 1 1250 Latin 2: Eastern Europe 1251 Cyrillic 1253 Greek 1254 Turkish 1257 Windows Baltic 1258 Vietnamese
Fixed pitch	False

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