page_title: Futura (typeface)
section_title: Usage
hierarchical_section_title: Futura (typeface) / Usage
caption_attribution_description: English: An American metal type specimen sheet of Futura Oblique (sort of like italic - long story). Design shows a hypothetical layout advertising a car. Date presumably late 1920s-1930s, judging by the car portrayed as modern.
context_page_description: Futura is a geometric sans-serif typeface designed by Paul Renner and released in 1927. It was designed as a contribution on the New Frankfurt-project. It is based on geometric shapes, especially the circle, similar in spirit to the Bauhaus design style of the period. It was developed as a typeface by the Bauer Type Foundry, in competition with Ludwig & Mayer's seminal Erbar typeface of 1926.
  Futura has an appearance of efficiency and forwardness. Although Renner was not associated with the Bauhaus, he shared many of its idioms and believed that a modern typeface should express modern models, rather than be a revival of a previous design. Renner's design rejected the approach of most previous sans-serif designs, which were based on the models of signpainting, condensed lettering and nineteenth-century serif typefaces, in favour of simple geometric forms: near-perfect circles, triangles and squares. It is based on strokes of near-even weight, which are low in contrast. The lowercase has tall ascenders, which rise above the cap line, and uses nearly-circular, single-story forms for the "a" and "g", the former previously more common in handwriting than in printed text.
context_section_description: Futura remains an important typeface family and is used on a daily basis for print and digital purposes as both a headline and body font. The font is also used extensively in advertisements and logos, notably by IKEA (until 2010), Supreme, Party City, Volkswagen, Royal Dutch Shell, Crayola, Swissair, FremantleMedia, Absolut and HP in their print ads. Particularly until the 1950s it was used extensively by the publishing industry as a general-purpose font.
  Beginning in the late 1970s, Futura was also the iconic typeface used by American Conceptual artist Barbara Kruger. She layers white text, set in Futura Bold Oblique, on a red background against black and white found photography from mass media sources. Her text challenges the viewer to reflect on gender, stereotypes and consumerism. Some of her notable works where Futura is featured are “Untitled (Your body is a battleground)", "You Are Not Yourself" and "I shop, Therefore I Am".
  A Cyrillic variant of the Futura Medium typography was made by Anatoli Muzanov for the 1980 Summer Olympics held in Moscow.
  Futura is also employed by Fox News Channel, the RAI (the Italian public broadcasting agency) for its logo and is used in the Italian railway system for signs.
  Futura has been used extensively in film and video. It is used for the title logo of the 1999 film American Beauty. It was also used in various TV shows including Doug, Lost, Warehouse 13, the American version of Sesame Street, which had the capital "I", lowercase "j", and numbers "1" and "4" in simplified forms, etc.  Futura is featured ubiquitously throughout the film adaptation of V for Vendetta, for everything from the title logo and ending credits, to signs, newspapers, computer screens and other props. Wes Anderson is fond of the font and used it in some of his films. Futura was also Stanley Kubrick's favorite typeface.
  Transport is another important area where Futura has been used extensively due to its ability to be read quickly from a distance; it can be found extensively in the instrument panel graphics within automobiles — Mercedes-Benz being one of the most prolific users of the font.  Futura is used extensively in aviation for instruments and control legends — most Boeing airliners use Futura within their cockpit controls, for example. NASA used Futura frequently during the Apollo space program, with charts, technical documents, and spacecraft instrumentation labels all making use of the typeface.
  Crockett Johnson used Futura for the lettering of his Barnaby comic strip, which started running in April 1942 in the newspaper PM. Where many cartoonists lettered their dialogues by hand, Johnson collaborated with the PM typesetters who would set his dialogues in italicized Futura medium and return them to him so that they could be integrated to his drawings.
  NBC used a modified version of Futura for its original 1986 version of the current logo and its wordmarks. 
  A bold version of the font was used for NBC Sports on-screen graphics from 1989 to 1991, and by CBS Sports from 1992 to 1996.
  In 1997, the Pittsburgh Steelers (an American football team) switched to rounded numbers on the jersey to match the number font (Futura Condensed) on their helmets. In 2012 the newly formed Western Sydney Wanderers Football Club use Futura on their logo and club documentation. The Minnesota Timberwolves adopted Futura during their 2017 rebranding.
  Futura is used on the current TV5 (Philippines) logo and is also Animax Asia's main typeface. All four of Vampire Weekend's albums use Futura on the covers, with the first two being exclusively Futura. The Boston Celtics' championship banners are also in Futura Condensed. 2008 science fiction-fantasy film City of Ember features Futura Medium in many prints through the story. The condensed version was used by videogame developer Bethesda Softworks for several of their games, including Fallout 3, Fallout: New Vegas, The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim and Fallout 4 as well as being used extensively throughout the Watchmen graphic novel as well as the movie based on it. The Medium version is
caption: An early American metal type specimen sheet of Futura Oblique. The design shows a hypothetical layout advertising a car, emphasising Futura's modernity and cleanliness.
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