Century Gothic

Category	Sans-serif
Classification	Geometric
Designer(s)	Sol Hess
Foundry	Monotype
Date created	1990
Design based on	Twentieth Century ITC Avant Garde

Century Gothic is a digitalsans-serif typeface in thegeometric style, released byMonotype Imaging in 1990.^[1][2] It is a redrawn version of Monotype's ownTwentieth Century, a copy of Bauer'sFutura, to match the widths ofITC Avant Garde Gothic. It is an exclusively digital typeface that has never been manufactured asmetal type.

Like many geometric sans-serifs, Century Gothic's design has a single-story "a" and "g", and an "M" with slanting sides resembling an upturned "W". Century Gothic has a highx-height (tall lower-case characters). Its origins (see below) come from a design intended for large-print uses such as headings and signs, and so it has a reasonably purely geometric design closely based on the circle and square, with less variation in stroke width than fonts designed for small sizes tend to show, and a relatively slender design in its default weight.

While many geometric sans-serif typefaces have been released to compete with the popular typefaceFutura, Century Gothic is perhaps unique in its origin: it redraws one to match the design proportions of a second. Century Gothic was created to be a substitute font forITC Avant Garde, designed byHerb Lubalin, and released by theInternational Typeface Corporation (ITC) in 1970, so a document created in one can be displayed in the other with no change to copyfit.^[3][4] This allows it to substitute interchangeably for Avant Garde in documents, an important feature since Avant Garde is a standard font in some forms of thePostScript digital printing standard, and so Century Gothic allowed Microsoft to use it in preference to paying for an ITC Avant Garde license.

Additionally, Century Gothic's design was based on Monotype's ownTwentieth Century, which was drawn bySol Hess between 1937 and 1947 for theLanston Monotype Company.^[5] Century Gothic is similar to ITC Avant Garde in its pure geometry, and does not possess the subtle variation in stroke width found in eitherFutura orTwentieth Century.^[6] However, it differs from ITC Avant Garde in that like Futura and Twentieth Century, Century Gothic does not have a descender at bottom right of the "u" (making it appear like a Greekupsilon υ), whereas Avant Garde does. Century Gothic also has larger, roundertittles on the lettersi andj more akin to Futura, whereas Avant Garde keeps the tittles square and the same width as the letter strokes. Most notably, it lacks the extremestylistic alternates of Avant Garde, such as highly slanted letters designed to fit together closely in kerning.^[7]

Century Gothic was intended as a display design for large headings and advertisements (although it is somewhat usable for body text because of the high x-height) and as a result Century Gothic is quite a light typeface, especially in default weight, with the classic display typeface feature of tight spacing and quite wide characters, in contrast to Twentieth Century which was intended more for small-size applications with a more solid stroke weight and open spacing.^[8] While its structure is similar to Futura, its regular style is between Futura and Twentieth Century's regular and light weights.

Century Gothic was one of several clones of PostScript standard fonts created by Monotype in collaboration with or sold to Microsoft, includingArial (a clone ofHelvetica),Book Antiqua (Palatino), and Bookman Old Style (ITC Bookman).^[9][10] As such, it has been bundled with many Microsoft products.Plus! 95 andWindows 98 included Century Gothic, but contemporary versions of Windows do not. It has been a part ofMicrosoft Office since the release of version 4.3 in 1994 and is available in the modern versions.^[11][12]

Levenim MT is a version of Century Gothic that includesHebrew alphabet and is available for free on most versions of Windows.^[13] Levenim MT has two weights, namely Regular and Bold. Unlike Century Gothic, Levenim MT does not have true italics. The two fonts also have some minor visual differences.

According to theUniversity of Wisconsin-Green Bay, Century Gothic uses much less ink than other, similar sans-serif typefaces. It was found that Century Gothic uses about 30% less ink thanArial. In order to save money that would be spent on printer ink for other typefaces, the university reportedly switched their default e-mail and printing typeface from Arial to Century Gothic.^[14] However, the typeface has also been found to use more paper—due to its wider letters—meaning that the savings on ink are offset by an increase in paper costs.^[15]

Along with the serif typefaceGaramond, Century Gothic is one of the two typefaces that PrintWise, an initiative of the U.S. government'sGeneral Services Administration, recommends U.S. government workers use for printed documents.^[16][17]

Apart from Avant Garde and Futura, a number of other fonts based on Avant Garde have been created to substitute for it in PostScript implementations. A particular case of this is an open-sourced set of fonts developed byURW and donated to theGhostscript project to create a free PostScript alternative. This includes an AvantGarde clone known as "Gothic L". It (or a derivative) is used by much open-source software such asR as a system font.^[18][19] A derivative of this family known as "TeX Gyre Adventor" has been prepared for use in theTeX scientific document preparation software.^[20]

• Media related toCentury Gothic at Wikimedia Commons
• Fonts in Use

• Monotype typefaces
• Microsoft typefaces
• Geometric sans-serif typefaces
• Typefaces and fonts introduced in 1990

• Articles with short description
• Short description is different from Wikidata
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