In fact, I thought it was Futura at first... then noticed that very un-Futura vertex on the ’M’ that only drops to the x-height. This font appears to be the similar to the font on many other public buildings—schools, post offices, etc—built in the 1950s and 1960s around the Twin Cities.
FWIW, this is the Minneapolis Fire Station #7 on E Franklin at Cedar.
I love the curved stroke on the ’7’.
Could it be a W flipped?
Mid-century architectural lettering is indeed the bomb. That’s what Neutraface is based on. Kabel will get you close.
That curved 7 is pretty hard to get in a Geometric Sans, though, although yes, Kabel or Erbar would be pretty close.
Just for curiosity’s sake, I spent the last hour-and-a half looking for fonts with the keyword “Geometric” on Linotype and found no match to this one. Stephen, you might be correct with the flipped W if my eyes haven’t failed me :)
If you’re doing keyword searching, there’s no better site than MyFonts. And soon, FontShop.
*Runs to MyFonts*
You know what I want for FontShop, though? For the font’s design information to be easily accessible when I view the face — kind of like MyFonts’ or Linotype’s but somewhere more prominent.
Also on the way.
... And for Typographica’s Favorite Fonts of 2005 — Part 2 — to come out soon :)
Even closer.
God bless you!
and while at it – please get rid of that redirect for german users to the german fontshop site… renders fontshop.com links posted on here unusable for germans.
many thanks in advance.
>please get rid of that redirect for german users to the german fontshop site…
Yes, i totally agree.
If i want to visit fontshop.com,
i want to visit f o n t s h o p . c o m !
Grüße
“Mid-century architectural lettering is indeed the bomb. That’s what Neutraface is based on. Kabel will get you close.”
Neutraface, Gotham, Proxima Nova... they’re all based on mid-century American lettering. And you’re right—Kabel is very similar. I’d even bet that a lot of the architectural lettering is even inspired by Kabel.
I wonder why there are so many variations on this idea, though? And how could it be reinterpreted or improved upon?
Err, because — if we took the pessimist look on things — back in the day when Futura was so popular, everybody made a copy of their own interpretation — all supposedly look very close to the original — and ran away with it. Spartan and Geometric 231 are good examples (no offense to anybody).
In my opinion, there is two branches of mid-century architectural face. One is more geometric (Futura, Kabel, etc.) and one more along the lines of grotesk (Neutraface, Proxima Nova and what have you).
H&FJ’s new Verlag would be a recent interpretation of that. As Avenir was to Futura, Verlag was to Kabel and Neutraface (considering the x-height, ascender and descender, length-wise, and ignoring the fact that I classified both fonts into different sub-genres.)
Dang that Verlag is beautiful. But like my other love, Nobel, currently out of reach...
Captured from web.archive.org on 16 Dec 2009. view this capture