He holds an MFA in graphic design from the Maryland Institute College of Art, where he also taught graphic design, and an MA in history from the University of Chicago.Įllen Lupton is a writer, graphic designer and the director of the Graphic Design MFA program at Maryland Institute College of Art and of the Center for Design Thinking. His design work has been featured in Communication Arts, Print, and Graphis. He is an assistant professor of graphic design at Brigham Young University.

Presenting artifacts from the Apollo 11 Mission, haute couture branding, and even gas station pumps, Thomas explains (and contradicts) his titular advice with wide-ranging commentary on the meanings, constraints, and deceptions of using a typeface.ĭouglas Thomas is a graphic designer, writer, and historian. Designer and historian Douglas Thomas unpacks Futura’s symbolic and practical influences on design, commercialism, politics, and contemporary social life. Never Use Futura is the first English-language book to chronicle the cultural history witnessed (and recorded) by the typeface Futura, from its avant-garde beginnings to its midcentury consumer triumph to its present-day nostalgic, critical, and forward-looking uses. One of the most iconic designs of the twentieth century, Futura has sold millions of people their hopes and dreams, not to mention shoes and cars true to its earliest advertising, nearly a century old, Futura is “The Type of Today and Tomorrow.” Long outliving its creator Paul Renner, Futura has weathered a worldwide economic depression, international trade embargoes, political boycotts, and partisan propaganda, plus decades of knockoffs and competitors. All rights reserved.Futura tells a history of modern public life hidden in plain sight. Typeface © 1992 Fundicion Tipografica Neufville, S.A., Data © 1992 URW. At different times, different type foundries have marketed the same font under those names. By the way, if you think Futura looks like typefaces named Intertype and Spartan, you're right. The appealing spikiness of both fonts, however, makes for clean-looking headlines and text as easy to read as any sans serif face can be.

As a result of this and its wider base, Futura has become the better known and more popular of the two families. Although it started life with some very eccentric letters, particularly 'a' and 'g', the lower-case alphabet of Futura is now a shade less eccentric and more polished. Kabel was designed by Rudolph Koch for Klingspor, while Futura was designed by Paul Renner for Bauer. Kabel and Futura are birds of a feather, and both fonts seem to have been fledged between 19.

Futura book