In the case of Spartan (Linotype version), the main differences are the lowercase 'a', which had both a one-story and two-story design; the left quote marks were available either rotated 180° or mirrored from the right hand variety, and the question mark is of a more usual design, instead of the backward 'S' design in the original.

The ATF version of Spartan is the same, except it has only the one-story 'a' and only mirrored quote marks.

Twentieth Century v. Futura. vs is for sports (correct my correction if the correction is wrong).

Check out this thread. It's a discussion about geometric sans like Futura, and Paul Hunt talks a little about Twentieth Century. He's the one to re-digitize it for the Lanston Type Company.

They ARE different faces, and I personally feel that you should keep the names accurately.

No, you're right. It's "vs." if they are competing. "v." if it is a comparison. I think. Anyway, I was typing haphazardly. My main question is: "Would it be blasphemy to call Twentieth Century Futura instead?"

Or, if it's a new modification, Twenty-first Century Futura?

Monotype & Linotype (including pre acquisition) don't allow renaming.

Sii, are you being facetious? I got the impression (no pun intended) that Keoxa is talking about several cases of metal type. You can label the drawers whatever you want.

Spartan (Lino & ATF) and Twentieth Century (Monotype) are for all intents and purposes copies of Futura, according to McGrew.

Keoxa, you can read a little bit about them in American Metal Typefaces of the Twentieth Century by Mac McGrew -- highly recommended if you're involved in letterpress.

-- K.

>Sii, are you being facetious?

No, was an honest mistake. Renaming digital fonts to avoid conflicts or fix font menu problems used to be a common activity.

Kentlew is correct. These are lead letters I'm talking about, not the "re-digitized" versions or any other. Thanks for the book recommendation, I'll scour those pages for details.

I want to know how different they are, and perhaps I should just print my own samples, scan them and digitally compare them. Because, depending on the foundry, there are PLENTY of variations in typefaces like Caslon and Garamond, and it is up to us to determine which ones are most faithful and useful. Nevertheless, we're still able to call them by there common names. I'm suggesting that the names Spartan, and Twentieth Century are more corporate safeguards than honorable names for the type, so I'd like to keep it real in my pressroom.

McGrew describes the differences. They are not many. He does not consider them significant. You might have to decide for yourself.

If you compared the same sizes of all three, you might notice the differences. But mixing one size of Spartan on a page with a different size of Twentieth Century, for example, would probably not show up any appreciable variances. Especially if you consider that there are sometimes subtle differences between different sizes of the same nominal typeface in metal anyway.

Nevertheless, if it was me, I'd probably keep the different drawers labeled according to the different fonts to retain the info about the original provenance, but perhaps arrange the drawers in the same cabinet acknowledging that the different sizes can essentially stand in for each other.

-- K.