Futura: The Typeface of Today and Tomorrow

James-Lee Duffy of We Are Shadows, and me

Just released: another in the series of short videos produced by D&AD that peer into the wonders of the Monotype archive. In this latest one, I have a chat with James-Lee Duffy of We Are Shadows about a stack of Futura specimens from the Bauer foundry, and how Futura is used today.


James-Lee Duffy

So you can enjoy the additional pleasure seeing them, here are some photos of some of the Futura materials we were looking at and mentioning in the video:

The Type of Today and Tomorrow
Futura Bold Oblique
Futura Inline

As I mention in the clip, Monotype didn’t create Futura, but when it became so successful in the late ’20s and the ’30s, foundries all over were trying to design typefaces to compete. The archive at Monotype (in our UK office, on the former site of the Monotype Works) contains folders with samples of typefaces released by many other foundries, showing that the company was keeping an eye on what was going on elsewhere.