Garage Gothic
Frere-Jones · Tobias Frere-Jones
A three-weight display family by Tobias Frere-Jones, derived from the crude numerical letterforms found on discarded parking garage tickets in 1980s Brooklyn.
About
Frere-Jones collected parking garage tickets intending to use them in collages, drawn to the matter-of-fact geometry of the printed numbers and the blurring caused by rapid mechanical printing. The truncated centres of M and W recall monospaced mechanical type, while rounded corners and joins make ink spread a design feature rather than a flaw. The family spans Regular, Bold and Black, with OpenType features for uppercase punctuation and a raised colon referencing the ticket-printing context.
Classification
Drawn from the crude, utilitarian letterforms of parking garage tickets, Garage Gothic sits firmly in the display category with its coarse geometry, rounded corners and truncated M and W forms derived from mechanical ephemeral printing traditions.