Franklin Gothic specimen

Spread with a solid black left page and the words FRANKLIN GOTHIC set so large in heavy black capitals that they run off the right page

The brief

A typography course assignment on the third year of the programme (2020/2021, lecturer Damir Bralić): pick a typeface, study it and design a printed specimen that explains what makes it what it is. The same course included two classic book typesetting exercises, an A5 setting of Hesse’s Demian and a pocket-size setting of Kundera’s The Unbearable Lightness of Being.

The approach

The specimen for Franklin Gothic is strictly black and white and works at two scales: every spread pairs a glyph or a word set enormous and cropped by the page with a page of small, well-behaved text. The booklet covers Morris Fuller Benton and the 1902 origin, the character set and weights, sizes from 9 to 24 pt, famous users, and the letters that give the face away, the double-storey g and the tail of the Q, compared against Gill Sans, Aller, Minion and Alegreya.

The outcome

A 13-page booklet exported as spreads, and two typeset book excerpts with title pages, contents, chapter openers and running heads.

Spread with the name MORRIS FULLER BENTON set huge across both pages, a black-and-white portrait of the type designer and a short biography — Morris Fuller Benton, who drew Franklin Gothic in 1902.

Spread with famous users of the typeface (MoMA, Time Magazine, New York Times, Starbucks, Gaga) in white on black, and a size waterfall of The quick brown fox from 9 to 24 pt — Who uses it, and a size waterfall.

Spread with giant white lowercase g glyphs bleeding off a black page, and a lowercase g outlined and overlaid with Gill Sans, Aller, Minion Pro and Alegreya Sans in colour — The double-storey g compared with other typefaces.

Spread with huge white Q and g on black, and a red Q on a grid overlaid on a black one, showing how the tail of the Q differs between Medium and Book — The tail of the Q in the Medium and Book weights.

Spread with punctuation and currency symbols in white on black and the numerals 1234567890 in four weights on white — Symbols and numerals.

Spread with the year 1902 set very large in white on black, the full character set including Croatian letters, and the list of weights from Book Regular to Medium Italic — 1902, the character set and the family of weights.

Booklet cover: Franklin GOTHIC set in black inside a pair of large curly braces, tilted on a white page — Cover of the booklet.

Title spread of a typeset excerpt of Demian: a blank left page and Hermann Hesse Demian in serif capitals centred on the right — Book typesetting exercise: Hermann Hesse, Demian, set in Baskerville Old Face.

Part opener of a typeset excerpt of The Unbearable Lightness of Being: Part One, Lightness and Weight, and the opening paragraphs in a light sans-serif — Book typesetting exercise: Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being, set in a light humanist sans.