Tuesday, June 1, 2010

Brought to You by the Letter...

Brought to you by the letter: C
Broadway, Regular, uppercase C

Broadway is another one of those highly recognizable typefaces, using it instantly invokes the eras of the 20s and 30s. I'm partial to the C because it has a sort of half-empty/half-full vibe happening. Standing alone, the Broadway uppercase C looks like much more than a C, it becomes quite abstract.

I like that the terminals are rounded instead of completely flat, which I think help counteract the very thick and rigid lines that make up the heavy black part of the letters. The black line in the uppercase C also helps make the bowl more interesting and distinguished, by creating a flat sided white space, which is uncommon for any bowl.


Courtesy of wikipedia.com, identifont.com

Design Foundry: American Type Founders; Linotype (now)
Designer: Morris Fuller Benton
Date: 1925
Classification: Decorative, Art Deco

Broadway is a very popular Art Deco typeface. Originally, it was designed as a capitals only typeface, but in the 1970s during a resurgence of Broadway came several new variants that included lowercase letters.

Art Deco was a big art movement between 1925 and the 1940s that included a lot of geometric shapes and was always very ornamental. Art Deco was truly design for design's sake. While once it was called elegant, glamorous and modern, people began to associate it with a false-opulence. I think society has turned around on Art Deco once more, and it's returned to being a sign of elegance and glamor, but now with a hint of vintage.