What's the term for when you have a rectangle with slightly curved sides (e.g., Eurostile)? I know there's a specialized geometry term for the shape you get when you take a bezier ellipse and pull the handles out as far as they'll go, as if you're trying to turn the ellipse into a square.
It's not "ellipsoid," but it's something like that. Any ideas?
Superellipse was the word I was thinking of—though it looks like squircle is the more accurate one. The whole point of figuring out the word, though, was to sound more technical and intelligent, and "squircle" doesn't really help me much there...
Or more generally Superellipse. Scroll down to the "history" part for info on design uses.
Only in the late 1950s did Piet Hien identify the mathematical basis of this shape, and begin to use it in various design applications, especially furniture.
I'd always mentally connected Bank Gothic and Microgramma/Eurostile, but I didn't realize there was a typo-geneological connection.
It's probably not that simple.
I had always thought Microgramma was CRT-tube inspired, but it seems to be much squarer than the tubes of that time.
Who knows, it may even have some De Stijl in it.
Whatever, it was very carefully and subtly drawn, and that seems to be a hallmark of the types of the immediate post WW2 era.
No doubt the designers were aware that their types would be on display at large sizes, reproduced by phototypositor.
Captured from web.archive.org on 5 Mar 2015. view this capture
