m p ar i ng

co
futura
to
poppins
futura
Inspired by the Dutch De Stijl and Russian Con-
structivist movements - along with the Bauhaus
headline
futura book
72pt

text
school and its dictum that “form fol­lows func- futura book
tion” – European designers explored elemental 12pt/14.4pt
geometry during the 1920s. Futura reflects this
passion. It was designed by the German book
designer and educator Paul Renner, who ap-
caption
plied elementary geometric form to typeface
futura book
design by constructing Futura with a T-square,
10pt/12pt
triangle, and compass. Renner’s original con-
cept was quite abstract; numerous changes
occurred before the Bauer foundry released
it from 1927-30. The original family had six
weights, plus three condensed weights, and an
inline design.

All strokes in each font are made of a single

line weight, and the number of strokes to create
each letter are minimized. The O is a perfect
circle, and a, b, d, p, and q were designed by
adding a single straight line to it. The t is com-
posed of two straight lines, and the tail of the
i does not curve. The G has no foot serif, and
the Q is a perfect circle broken by a diagonal
slash.

Futura and the host of other geometric

sans-serif fonts were embraced during the late
1920s and 1930s as an expression of mod­
ernism and industrial culture.
Text by Philip Meggs and Rob Carter, from the book
“Typographic Specimens: The Great Typefaces.”
 Geometric sans serif typefaces have
been a popular design tool ever since
these actors took to the world’s stage.
Poppins is one of the new comers to this
long tradition. With support for the Deva-
nagari and Latin writing systems, it is an
internationalist take on the genre.

Many of the Latin glyphs (such as the

ampersand) are more constructed and
rationalist than is typical. The Devanagari
design is particularly new, and is the first
ever Devanagari typeface with a range
of weights in this genre. Just like the Latin,
the Devanagari is based on pure geome-
try, particularly circles.

Each letterform is nearly monolinear,

with optical corrections applied to stroke
joints where necessary to maintain an
even typographic color. The Devana-
gari base character height and the Latin
headline ascender height are equal; Latin capital
poppins letters are shorter than the Devanagari
regular characters, and the Latin x-height is set
62pt rather high.

text The Devanagari is designed by Ninad

poppins Kale. The Latin is by Jonny Pinhorn.
regular
Text by Google Fonts.
12pt/14.4pt

poppins
caption
poppins
regular
10pt
futura
C
headline:futura book, 55pt
diagram: futura book, 90pt

C
V
V
Q
Q headline:

diagram:

poppins
poppins regular, 41pt
poppins regular, 90pt
futura
?
headline:futura book, 55pt
diagram: futura book, 90pt

?
&
&
“
“ headline:

diagram:

poppins
poppins regular, 41pt
poppins regular, 90pt
 ABCDEFGH
IJKLMNOPQR
STUVWXYZ
abcdefghi
jklmnopqr
stuvwxyz
1234567890
[(“!?:;$&”)]
text: futura thin, 48pt
text: futura book, 48pt
 ABCDEFGH
IJKLMNOPQR
STUVWXYZ
abcdefghi
jklmnopqr
stuvwxyz
1234567890
[(“!?:;$&”)]
text:poppins regular, 48pt
text: poppins thin, 48pt
design and reasearch by:

Caroline Coffey

DES-053
Introduction to Graphic Design
Spring 2020