Benton's Franklin Gothic family is a set of solid designs, particularly suitable for display and trade use such as headlines rather than for extended text. Despite a period of eclipse in the 1930s, after the introduction of European faces like Kabel and Futura, they were re-discovered by American designers in the 1940s and have remained popular ever since.

The typeface continues to maintain a high profile, appearing in a variety of media from books to billboards. “Gothic” was a contemporary term (now little-used except to describe period designs) meaning sans-serif.įranklin Gothic has been used in many advertisements and headlines in newspapers.

Gothic #1, Square Gothic Heavy, Gothic #16įranklin Gothic and its related faces are a large family of sans-serif typefaces in the industrial or grotesque style developed in the early years of the 20th century by the type foundry American Type Founders (ATF) and credited to its head designer Morris Fuller Benton.