Griffith Gothic
Frere-Jones · Tobias Frere-Jones, Fred Shallcrass
An expansion of C. H. Griffith's Bell Gothic, the 1937 telephone-directory typeface, extended into a headline family with six weights, matching italics and a condensed series.
About
Originally commissioned by Patrick Mitchell at Fast Company, Griffith Gothic takes Bell Gothic's defensive design strategies, thinned joins, blunted corners and oversized counterforms, and builds them into an 18-style family suited to editorial display work. Fred Shallcrass subsequently revised and updated the family, adding refinements including contextual alternates for the 'f' and a set of OpenType features covering raised colons, alternate quotes and uppercase punctuation. The result makes available, at headline sizes, the idiosyncratic rhythm that graphic designers had long admired in the original six-to-eight-point directory face.
Classification
Derived from C. H. Griffith's Bell Gothic, a 1937 American grotesque designed for telephone directories, expanded with additional weights, condensed widths and a new italic. The deliberately blunted joins and enlarged counterforms place it firmly in the grotesque tradition.