Discussion Topic 2- Jaye Valery

Morris Fuller Benton

Famous American Typeface designer Morris Fuller Benton was initially trained as a mechanical engineer and revolutionised the type industry with his contribution of more than 200 alphabets to today’s current typeface library. An in-house designer with ATF for most of his career, he collaborated with many designers to create timeless types, including "Century Roman” with Theodor Low de Vinne in 1885, “Garamond” with T. M. Cleveland in 1914 and “Stymie” with S. Hess and G. Powell in 193. His other influential typefaces include "Mirage" 1901, "Franklin Gothic" 1903–12, "Century School" 1919 and "Bank Gothic"1930.

Morris Fuller Benton had a strong design sense that allowed his typefaces to have a long presence in the publishing world, and into the Twenty-First Century. Benton had an enormous impact on the typographic world with his concept of grouping fonts into families to eliminate the chaotic library of fonts. Today, it is not unusual that many fonts come in a family that group together bold, light, italic and narrow variances to create a sense of order in Typography that the early Twentieth century did not have. His mechanical engineering background had enormous impact on the way he used technology to create his typefaces. Morris’ father, Linn Boyde Benton, invented the pantographic engraving machine, which was capable not only of “scaling a single font design pattern to a variety of sizes, but could also condense, extend, and slant the design” (Linotype, 2012) Benton worked on these machines throughout his career at ATF and refined them to an impressive degree of precession in order to create perfected type. 

Morris Fuller Benton's most
famous typefaces designs 

 

Bruno Magg

Bruno Magg graduated from the Basel School of Design in Switzerland with a degree in Typographic Design and Visual Communications and moved to London to start his career working for “Monotype”. Bruno went on to start his own Typeface design studio “Dalton Magg” after a long career at Chicago and London’s “Monotype” studios. His studio, along with business partner Liz Dolton, designs fonts for use in corporate identities and logos. He has designed some of the most recognisable commercial typefaces for companies such as British Telecom, Vodaphone, BMW and Hewlett Packard. Magg has also created his own personal typefaces such as “Interface” and “Contemporary Sans.”

Magg has a very contemporary and commercial approach to typeface design. Unlike other contemporary type designers who explore the futility and boundaries of font and where is can be used, Magg focuses on the strict qualities of type and explores its commerciality. In a recent interview, Magg reveals that he has designed a typeface that will rival “Helvetica.” He states that this recent work is “beautifully crafted, well spaced with not a chink in a curve or anything- perfectly drawn but hopefully with a bit of personality.” In creating this font, Magg wanted to create a typeface that could be used in the corporate environment “but has a bit of warmth that Univers doesn’t have.” This font is competing in the big league against “Univers,” “Akzidenz” and “Helvetica.” Magg definitely comes from a different era to which Benton was designing. It seems Magg has positioned himself in this industry in a very competitive manner and the commerciality and success of his designs might outweigh the adventure of expanding the limits of typeface design.

Magg's Helvetica Rival Typeface