Trade Gothic is a

sans-serif In typography and lettering, a sans-serif, sans serif (), gothic, or simply sans letterform is one that does not have extending features called "serifs" at the end of strokes. Sans-serif typefaces tend to have less stroke width variation than ...

typeface A typeface (or font family) is a design of Letter (alphabet), letters, Numerical digit, numbers and other symbols, to be used in printing or for electronic display. Most typefaces include variations in size (e.g., 24 point), weight (e.g., light, ...

designed in 1948 by Jackson Burke (1908–1975), who continued to work on further style-weight combinations, eventually 14 in all, until 1960, while he was director of type development for Linotype in the US. The family includes three weights and three widths. Like many gothic fonts of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Trade Gothic is more irregular than many other

families that came later, especially later ones like

Helvetica Helvetica, also known by its original name Neue Haas Grotesk, is a widely-used sans-serif typeface developed in 1957 by Swiss typeface designer Max Miedinger and Eduard Hoffmann. Helvetica is a neo-grotesque design, one influenced by the f ...

and

Univers Univers () is a sans-serif typeface family designed by Adrian Frutiger and released by his employer Deberny & Peignot in 1957. Classified as a Grotesque (typeface classification), neo-grotesque sans-serif, one based on the model of nineteenth-cen ...

. This variety is often popular with designers who feel that it creates a more characterful effect. Its complex history has left it with several unexpected features; for instance, in some digital releases, the default bold weight is more condensed than the regular weight, the opposite of the norm, with a wider bold offered as an alternative.

Releases

Like many pre-digital fonts, cross-licensing has meant the original digitisation of Trade Gothic is available from a range of companies, including Adobe (14 styles) and Linotype (36).

Trade Gothic Next

Released in February 2009 by Linotype, it is a redesign by Akira Kobayashi and Tom Grace. The most important change was to remove the inconsistencies found in the original family. Other reworked designs include terminals, stroke endings, the spacing, and the kerning. The family includes 17 fonts in four weights and three widths, with the fourth (Light) weight only in widest width fonts, and complementary italic in all but Compressed width fonts. It supports ISO-Adobe 2, Adobe CE,

Latin Extended Over a thousand characters from the Latin script are encoded in the Unicode Standard, grouped in several basic and extended Latin blocks. The extended ranges contain mainly precomposed letters plus diacritics that are equivalently encoded with co ...

characters. OpenType features include sub/superscript, proportional lining figures. The extended width from original Trade Gothic was not included. Linotype also released some styles with a rounded design.

Trade Gothic Next Rounded (2009)

It is a rounded version of Trade Gothic Next.

Trade Gothic Display (2017)

Designed by Lynne Yun of Monotype GmbH, this family is based on Trade Gothic Condensed Heavy, but with only capital glyphs for Latin texts. The different fonts can be used over each other in layers to create complex effects. The family include five fonts in one weight and one width, with five different styles inside glyph outlines. OpenType features include case-sensitive forms, numerators/denominators, fractions, standard ligatures, localized forms, sub/superscript, proportional/lining figures, glyph (de)composition, kerning, mark (to mark) positioning.

Usage

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'' often uses Trade Gothic along with Hector Rounded. Explaining why he often uses Trade Gothic in an article for HiLoBrow, designer Tony Leone wrote that Trade Gothic, especially its Bold Condensed weight, "is airy in its spacing — especially when set as text — which gives it its pleasing character...it plays well with others — that is, it combines nicely with more extravagant or decadent faces and can serve as a workhorse option with other sans serifs." Trade Gothic is also used as the font in

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's logo.

References