This will provoke the ire of Eurostile fans ... if there are any.

It's not you Alex, it's not you! Eurostile is impossible to set. It always looks baggy and lifeless. Like a lank, dated hairdo. I rank it alongside some of the worst popular faces. Frankly it's a stinker. Its use should be limited purely to car dashboards.

Eurostile is not particularly well suited to use for financials (if that's the business your client is in), so they've made an inappropriate choice of font. See if you can talk them out of it and into using another, more suitable face. Justify your advice with rationale like, "It makes more sense. A more appropriate face will communicate your branding to your customers more effectively. I'm the type expert so you should listen to me, or the bunny gets it, mkay?"

I can't think of a single corporate/finance outfit that makes successful use of Eurostile.

I blame neil Sedaka and his entourage.

j a m e s

I second olho. ;o)

It's hard to go 'modern' with a face that has a strong era-attached to it.

I did my best at convinccing the customer today, with no luck. They don't care too much about "what looks good", it's all about concistency. Of course, at the beginning of the project, they told us we were free to "challenge" (or whatever word they ued) their design guidelines.

I was armed with 7 powerpoint slides explaining what makes eurostile uglier tha FF Netto, but for no use.

Do you have any examples of financial institutions who have made _unsuccessful_ use of Eurostile?

I don't think it's a total stinker. The bold caps are really nice. But the lower case ... all spikes and boxes.

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Bison Design
Spön

Of course the era attached to this one is the 24th century! (Eurostile's all-caps brother Microgramma is spec'd for Starfleet hull markings in Star Trek)

You may be able to sell them off of using it by informing them it's a Trekkie font.

>But the lower case ... all spikes and boxes.

If you need okay-lc with an eurostile touch, Foundry Monoline could be the way to go.
Or try FF Max, for a contemporary alternative.
Or you go Eurostile uc extended bold, grey on black ;)

You could also go for FoundryMonoline

Similar to eurostile but with a little bit more refinement.

The customer made it clear that they'll stick with Eurostile. Can you believe it, choosing eurostile in 2007 to look modern and up to date?

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Bison Design
Spön

The customer is always right, even when they are wrong.

In the Dan Ackroyd / John Belushi film Neighbours, in one of the early scenes set in the tow-truck driver's shop there is a sign on the wall at the rear that says, "The customer is always wrong!".

At the end of the day I drag out one of my trusty maxims: I don't mind as long as somebody else is paying. In other words, grin and bear it, and look forward to better days ahead.

j a m e s

I think that Eurostile works pretty okay in Ralph Lauren’s Polo Sport-logo.

Eurostile is a wonderful typeface, a great job without much competitors despite its age. it works great on the logos of Gant, Gas, FCUK, Printemps department store, NYC's Cafe Gray, Toshiba, Subaru, Opel, Spike or Sisley. If used by a skilled graphic designer, it may look as "modern" and "trendy" as any other type which was designed in the last 10 years. Well that's my opinion at least.

dr

Eurostile is one of the few typefaces that I remember giving me this strange, uncomfortable certainty of looking at something exceptionally bulky and misshapen - back in the days when I was a kid and didn’t consciously care about these things.
I’ve never seen a good logo using eurostile, it always seemed of the day before yesterday to me and - even worse - incredibly cheap. And I’m just talking about logos here.

I really feel with you my friend, I was forced once to use E.S. for a project. After that, I drove away 2 or 3 clients because I refused to use E.S.

But I think the best way to use it anyway is to keep it as small as possible with a generously increased tracking.

Cheers,

Günni

You could always swap it with Netto and see if they even notice :P (... and risk getting fired over eurostile :O )

I think Eurostile looks bad because it's included on PCs. Obviously that doesn't hold true for typefaces like Verdana and Georgia, since not every font is created by the likes of Matthew Carter, but anything that's not 100% spot-on and timeless is going to get worn out very quickly when it's included on millions of PCs.

Alex, since you are from Norway – are you perhaps talking about the not so sucessful new (well actually, the symbol is in fact very close to other existing logotypes, but that's another story) logo for the new big company Bring?

http://www.bring.no/
It looks like Eurostile, and this was released a couple of weeks ago. Personally I think it looks terrible, but I dont know the whole story why it ended up this way. It was done by a swedish agency, and I dont feel proud ;-)

Eurostile is best in all caps, indeed began it's life as a caps only face.

I will third the use of Foundry Monoline for text. Call it the text version of Eurostile. I first became aware of Foundry Monoline after visiting MoMA:QNS and viewing their way-finding program. It was, I though, the best looking use of Eurostile I'd ever seen. Turns out it was FM. I couldn't find any decent images of the interior signage at MoMA:QNS since it's now closed (it was the temporary home of MoMA). However, you can see some of it at the portfolio site of the designers: http://www.twotwelve.com/flash/ >> Projects >> MoMA QNS >> Images 2&3. FM was used for the QNS Matisse Picasso exhibit -- the program used it for text.

Good luck!

*edit - found this other photo, not the best, but you get the idea*

> Eurostile is a wonderful typeface, a great job without much competitors despite its
> age. it works great on the logos of Gant, Gas, FCUK, Printemps department store, NYC’s
> Cafe Gray, Toshiba, Subaru, Opel, Spike or Sisley. If used by a skilled graphic
> designer, it may look as “modern” and “trendy” as any other type which was designed in
> the last 10 years. Well that’s my opinion at least.

I agree. It looks great in some logos. It also looked great in 2001 - a space oddisey and a number of other scifi movies.

But my task is to make it look good in headlines and short bodytext (payoffs etc) on a fincial website.

> the new big company Bring?

it was set in foundry monoline, i think.

And yes, it looks crappy.

If useful, you might take a look at Metro DF, the typeface designed for the mexico city subway, very much inspired by eurostile but slightly different, a little bit more "modern". available for free at http://www.dafont.com/fr/metro-df.font (check the kerning though, and some characters might not be available. best suited for headlines).

dr

Don't know if this helps at all, but Linotype recently released a revamped Opentype version of Eurostile called Eurostile Next. It's drawn by Akira Kobayashi and is based on the original metal types, i think.

Eurostile / Microgramma (same thing!) looks more acceptable and less pukesome in bold guise. It works for simple logos like the Ralph Lauren Polo Sport Logo on account of the word form P O L O. An easy stretch for such a modular type. Give Eurostile more challenging word images to render and its modular "spikes and boxes" monotony soon starts to choke.

I still blame Neil Sedaka and his entourage.

j a m e s

Context is everything. This maxim was never truer than for logotypes and work marks.

What baffles me most about some typophilers is their black & white, cut 'n dried view of fonts and typography. Some people here are saying Eurostyle always looks bad, no matter what the context, while others insist it always looks good or is at least an inherently good typeface design.

In actuality, it all depends on context, yet if the word content / image is sufficiently demanding, certain fonts don't measure up, pack it in early, show their lack of range and teeth. Microgramma / Eurostile is one such font.

The bold version is partly redeemed from such embarrassment in much the same way as bold Helvetica and Arial.

Ya know't ah mean? Know't ah mean? Eh? Reet! Reet! Erm. . .well actually erm. . .

j a m e s

Maybe you could pair it with Heldustry, a typeface designed as being halfway between Helvetica and Eurostile. Use Heldustry for text and Eurostile for display.

House Gothic is a nice alternative, although it's lacking the extra wide variation.

http://www.houseind.com/index.php?page=showfont&id=15

A few years ago I did a brand refreshment for a big company that had Eurostile in their CI (here and here). With extra effort I think you could achieve some interesting results with lighter weights of the font :)

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AL ▪▪▪▪