Bank Gothic Alternatives

Stephen Coles

Last edited October 28, 2015

Overused typefaces can lose their impact, especially in branding, advertising, and package design where originality is important. Here are some less common square sans serifs in the style of Bank Gothic by Morris Fuller Benton. Some offer more weights, styles, and lowercase characters for greater versatility than the old standby.

Some notes on a few of these typefaces: Red Rooster’s Banque Gothique is an alternative digitization and adds an additional condensed width as well as a shadowed version. Sackers Square Gothic predates Bank Gothic for an older, more rigid, yet handmade look. Morris Sans is a revival of Benton’s original 1930 face with a newly designed lowercase and a variety of figure styles. Bank Gothic AS offers a lowercase as well, as designed by Michael Doret. FF Gothic is Bank Gothic re-imagined by Neville Brody.

See also: Square.

Morris Sans is a newly revised and extended version of a small geometric family of typefaces originally produced by Morris Fuller Benton in 1930 for ATF. His initial design consisted of an alphabet of squared capital letters with a unique twist that characterized its appearance: corners with rounded exteriors and right-angle interiors. The types were intended for use in the fine print found on... Read More

While a senior in college, Christian Schwartz worked for a clothing company, designing t-shirts and labels. The aesthetic of one of the lines mixed industrial and military looks, which called for a lot of stencil type. He picked up some stencils at a hardware store and digitized the characters, since other companies regularly ripped off prints they designed with readily available fonts. In this... Read More

Based on a rigid grid of squares and triangles, FF Gothic is probably Neville Brody’s most strictly constructed type family. In spite of the simplicity of the basic forms, its many variations allow for play and variety.

Albert Boton is one of the bright lights of 20th century typeface design in France. In 2002, he developed two new typefaces for FontFont: FF Aircraft and FF Studio. These are rather different from his general body of work. FF Aircraft and FF Studio are mediations on modernist letterform designs from the period between 1920 and 1935. Boton’s typographic exercises are inspired by studies... Read More

Originally drawn for a logotype, the FF District Bold style was completed in 2001. For French designer Albert Boton, it was refreshing to work in this style, and to tinker with the weight and the limitations peculiar to this kind of family. The rounded corners and subtle details gave the design stylishness and personality. First released in 2002 as part of FF Bastille Display family (together... Read More