When I was young we were first taught how to letter by hand, so when we were allowed to use Leroy, it felt a lot like cheating. I suppose it was great that perfect results were easy to achieve, but replacing skill with pattern-following was not necessarily an improvement.
To this day, I linger over old research articles that have maps and graphs that had been lettered by hand. Many papers written in the 1800s have beautifully clear line drawings of apparatus that can be much more useful than the photos included in newer papers.
I knew one person who had perfect hand lettering. And could mimick other people's lettering. Alas, they eschewed forgery, embracing jazz instead. (They hand lettered their own liner notes, natch.)
Source: I was a truly terrible draughtsman.
Neil Caffrey would be proud!
Emotionally, what I feel when I see text using it is: "This information is serious and if you don't pay attention to what this says someone could get hurt"
There's nothing playful about it at all, which makes sense in how it was used for industrial controls, military signage, elevators, and the like.
The idea is that the font itself is not particularly serious, but we are used to see it in serious contexts, so we make the association.
And there is also the support, when some text is engraved on metal, there is some permanence to it, some commitment. The one who wrote this really means it. It is not like a sheet of paper, or worse, a computer screen where everything can vanish at the push of a button.
I think the titles summarizes it perfectly. It means hard work. When we see this, we imagine industrial machinery and professionals, because that's where it is used. In an alternative world where Comic Sans would be used for this purpose, it would be seen as serious.
And, as someone born and raised in the south, I was thoroughly enamored with this ubiquitous font that implied the seriousness and purpose of each control implement, to include the priority of the functionality said implement represented, on countless panels I engaged with.
This deep dive was pleasing to my soul and I'm immensely thankful to the author for taking the time (and the photos) to indulge in traversing this wormhole for us.
Add this to the list of wonderful things I never expected to wake up to on HN!
This is just how you used to be taught to do lettering in a drafting class. The straight lines and simple shapes make it easy to do lettering with pencil or a pen, which is also why all the lines are the same width and all the line caps are rounded.
Later on these turned into stencils, which let users do lettering quickly by tracing the pen inside the stencil - and then turned into fonts for use in print. But all that came later. What we have here is just lettering people learned in drafting classes, and which was later used to make stencils and templates.
TFA doesn't suggest that, at all. A font is a concrete instantiation of a writing style, and TFA is about the history of one such concrete instance - not the general style it's an instance of. Also the connection to drafting and lettering stencils is discussed in some detail midway through.
(Also more generally: kind of amazing to imagine reading an article of this depth, that mentions years of obsessive research and links to the author's 1200-page book on the history of typing, and thinking: "yeah this guy probably doesn't know about drafting".)
What I'm saying is that there are many "concrete instantiations" of drafting lettering style, that all look basically the same, because they all came from the same source, and Gorton is just one of them. So what we're seeing in elevators and on plaques is not "Gorton" specifically. While in contrast we do see Helvetica specifically on NYC subway signs, Johnston in the London tube, etc.
Too fine of a point? Perhaps. And also, it doesn't take away from the quality of the essay which is a delightful romp through the history of draftman's lettering showing up in all sorts of forgotten utilitarian places.
(But I've got to ask - what's with the ad hominem at the end? We should be above that.)
Open a couple of old drafting lettering guides (e.g. ones linked in sibling comments or TFA), and look closely. They'll obviously have a similar overall vibe, but there'll be tons of variations - differently shaped 3/4/7, where the curves start and stop on letters like CJGS569, whether the various corners are pointed or rounded or flattened, etc.
If your premise above is true, then we'd expect to see similar sorts of variations in the various fonts derived from drafting style, and TFA's entire point is that the author has collected hundreds of cases where we don't. Check his photos - they show the same font with the same idiosyncrasies, the off-balance G, two flattened points on the 4, the slightly asymmetric 8, etc. TFA is about the ubiquity of that specific set of letter shapes (modulo some variations that he discusses), not just of lettering that's generally in the drafting style.
(Also: in the best of faith and not meant as shade, you might want to look up "ad-hominem".)
If you look at the photos in the article, there are a lot of variations! For example, in the article, if you look at the first two sets of photos of keyboards, you see a variety of shapes, especially visible with the 6s/9s, 0s, Rs, Ss, etc. And then in the next set of photos (the ones with a selection of plaques), you again see a collection of various letter shapes - look at the varying shapes of Gs, Ss, etc. This repeats throughout, when you look at the random assortments of plates and signage.
Later on, after he discusses ANSI and DIN standards, the author goes on to say:
> In the regulatory space, the U.S. military canonized Gorton in 1968 as a standard called MIL-SPEC-33558 for aircraft and other equipment dials, cancelled it in 1998… then brought it back again in 2007.
Except that the specimens he shows right below, of ANSI Y14 and MS 33558 (and whatever the third one is), are very different from Gorton and even from each other - just look at those letter forms. Which makes sense, as their lineage is _not_ from Gorton, but from traditional lettering.
So that's what I mean - it's not that Gorton _specifically_ is everywhere, it's just that draftman's lettering style is everywhere, and in many variants, including the very popular Gorton one.
I also believe that it's more likely that the font was informed by what was commonly taught as good lettering for technical drawings in that era.
For example, consider the one-stroke gothic lettering in 1883's Standard Lettering, published by the Columbia School of Drafting:
https://archive.org/details/standardletterin00claf/page/42/m...
And here's A TEXT-BOOK OF FREE-HAND LETTERING, part of the TECHNICAL DRAWING SERIES, first published in 1895:
https://archive.org/details/textbookoffreeha00daniiala/page/...
Consider the "single-stroke lettering" suggested in that texbook:
https://archive.org/details/textbookoffreeha00daniiala/page/...
https://archive.org/details/textbookoffreeha00daniiala/page/...
Also consider the model forms for pre-penciled gothic lettering:
https://archive.org/details/textbookoffreeha00daniiala/page/...
It seems that such lettering was already common when the machines were introduced to produce similar lettering.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3
Playing cards use this style of lettering. Not sure how far back that goes but I kind of doubt they all derive from Gorton's specific engraving machines.
Called out in the article - "but I know simple technical writing standards existed already, and likely influenced the appearance of the newfangled routing font. [photograph captioned: From a 1895 “Free-hand lettering” book by Frank T. Daniels]"
Edit: The above might sound too harsh, sorry. You're probably right, but after reading such a beautiful piece, your reaction was really a buzzkill for me.
Perfectly accurate though.
This is just a thing they failed to emphasize — maybe — considering the credentials, because it was blaringly obvious to them.
This feels more like a detrctive story about figuring out the origins of one concrete manifestation of a font and not a text about where that family of fonts comes from.
> In the end, I’m sticking with Gorton for the whole branch since that feels the most well-known name, but I feel ill-equipped to make that call for everyone. You might choose to call it Gorton, Leroy, TT&H, Taylor-Hobson, or one of the many other names. (Just, ideally, not Linetica.)
Since the author was concentrated on the particular letterforms that seemed more consistent in the lineage observed, the usage makes sense. But that naming, even with the acknowledgement that it likely comes from the standards of drafting of the day:
> I don’t know how this first proto-Gorton was designed – unfortunately, Taylor, Taylor & Hobson’s history seems sparse and despite personal travels to U.K. archives, I haven’t found anything interesting – but I know simple technical writing standards existed already, and likely influenced the appearance of the newfangled routing font.
> This was perhaps the first modern pantograph engraver, and perhaps even the arrival of a concept of an engraving font – the first time technical writing was able to be replicated consistently via the aid of the machine.
But it also seems a reasonable critique of the article that it's mislabeling to call the MIL-SPEC-33558 and ANSI Y14.2M or even the WWII equipment lettering "Gorton" simply by visual similarity without evidence to show ancestry to the specific engraving machines, dies, or letter sets of Gorton/TTH/etc. And that is also done throughout both with direct evidence and without.
https://archive.org/details/standardletterin00claf/page/42/m...
> I don’t know how this first proto-Gorton was designed – unfortunately, Taylor, Taylor & Hobson’s history seems sparse and despite personal travels to U.K. archives, I haven’t found anything interesting – but I know simple technical writing standards existed already, and likely influenced the appearance of the newfangled routing font.
The author's comparison of the fonts actually argues against them being of the claimed lineage. Consider the many differences between the Taylor, Taylor & Hobson machine’s fonts and the Gorton machine’s fonts. If Gorton had a license to use the Hobson machine designs, which they did, they could have simply copied the TT&H fonts verbatim. But they clearly did not. Why not? I think it's likely that they simply preferred a different design, one closer to the letterforms that were more commonly used by draftsmen in the American market. In other words, the Gorton reference design was not the TT&H font design.
At least, that's my best guess based on the evidence presented.
> Each of these reappearances made small changes to the shapes of some letters. Leroy’s ampersand was a departure from Gorton’s. Others softened the middle of the digit 3, and Wrico got rid of its distinctive shape altogether. Sometimes the tail of the Q got straightened, the other times K cleaned up. Punctuation – commas, quotes, question marks – was almost always redone. But even without hunting down the proof confirming the purchase of a Gorton’s pantograph or a Leroy template set as a starting point, the lineage of its lines was obvious. (The remixes riffed off of Gorton Condensed or the normal, squareish edition… and at times both. The extended version – not that popular to begin with – was often skipped.)
While these standards date from around 1930, they were based on much older lettering textbooks. The oldest that I have seen was from 1871, and these German textbooks did not differ much from the American textbooks quoted above.
Maybe you could explain what part of the comment you replied to you think is either wrong or already covered by the article, so that either we can realise what we failed to notice in our first reading or so someone can explain to you why you're wrong in thinking that comment isn't correct in the context of having read the full article :)
I'm guessing these letters are also easy to create with a CNC machine.
(Now that the page has loaded I see he identifies engraving machines.)
(The tail of the Q is a tell -- not a straight line, not a simple shape, but identical in lettering systems based on the engravers.)
Had no idea the rabbit hole went this deep. Work with CAD standards and on my to-do list is adding rendering for IFC text notes to a GL application and was wondering what default font to use. Haven't checked STEP yet, but IGES defined a special font code (FC2) for "LeRoy", so these things percolate through technology like the apocryphal Roman Cart/Railroad Gauge story!
I suppose it’s something like how a modern reader might react to seeing a “long s” — ſ — for the first time.
Again, this isn’t meant to insult anyone, just that it’s really fascinating to see a different generational perspective here.
Also the author's CV lists working at google from 2006, so he's not exactly a youngster.
You could’ve looked him up. He’s not hard to find and definitely not post-millennial. Design director at Figma and previously worked at Medium, Google, and Code for America. Started his master’s in the late 90s.
https://mastodon.online/@mwichary
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SDI8ubVZi7w
Even if he were, these types of generational comments are trite, like the “only 90s kids will get this” memes. It is naive to assume someone’s age from an opinion; the tapestry of human diversity is considerably more complex than that.
> nothing about these letterforms were unusual or “ugly” to me as they were practically ubiquitous.
Ubiquity has nothing to do with beauty. You can live with something all your life and still find it ugly. Or you can develop your taste and change your opinion. You can even have nuanced opinions. Like the author, who mentions liking the font after the initial reaction. He called this post “a love letter”.
https://hachyderm.io/@mwichary@mastodon.online/1140043864696...
Look at the length of the post—that is more research on the subject than most of us will ever do. Let’s perhaps give the benefit of the doubt that a long time professional with the passion to do this amount of research has some basis for their views which go beyond when they were born.
> like how a modern reader might react to seeing a “long s” — ſ — for the first time.
There are a plethora of reactions to that: “how strange”, “how intriguing”, “how beautiful”, … Most people don’t think every old thing they encounter for the first time is ugly.
Perhaps what you're interpreting as generational perspective is Marcin's analytical perspective as a professional designer. He's got a very keen eye for both historical design and modern. Also I read this post as a sort of fond irony, "look at this unusual and ugly font it's actually a thing of beauty, let me show you."
If some community teaches Rules of Beauty which these characters contravene and are thereby deemed ugly, that says more about the merit of such Rules than anything else.
That ampersand, though... okay. You can have that one.
I sometimes feel who are deep in a subject sometimes are too entrenched in their world with rules and guidelines, that to me don't seem all that important to judge quality in the real world; or at least how I perceive things.
Another example also comes from the world of typography: text figures (non-lining numerals). To me they're ugly and difficult to read. Typographers like them because they fit better into the appearance of text, and that's true, but of low importance to me. Numbers are not words, and I feel they don't have to look the same. I like them to look different. I want them to be easy to read, which text figures aren't. (I actually went to the effort of creating custom CSS using Firefox's Stylus add-on to force lining numerals on all websites I visit.)
“Beauty”, as they say, “is in the eye of the beholder”. It is not a value judgement to call something ugly, but a subjective opinion. And the author does mention they came to appreciate it:
> My first thought was: What a mess. Is this how “grotesque” fonts got their name?
> Then, the second thought: I kind of like it.
I get the "ick" when I see terrible typography. I can barely stand to look at American highway signs, it's almost physically painful how horrific they are to me:
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:MUTCD_Sign_Assembly_...
http://www.whence.com/hershey-fonts
* with the help of others ^_^
https://www.londonmuseum.org.uk/blog/doves-type-thames-myste...
Does anyone else have cool font/typeface stories?
This makes me want an old keyboard. Amazing how hardy keyboards were back then.
I'm relieved to find I'm not the only person who wanders around photographing the typography.
There are N of us!
Typography is a bit of mystery to me. I can somehow recognize "bad" or "strange" fonts, but often I can't put my finger on it. I was immediately put off by the font of the essay, but I kept reading, and right in the middle came the big reveal (spoiler alert):
> (This essay is typeset in a strangely-spaced version of Century put together for Selectric Composer typewriters and recreated for on-screen use. If that didn’t bother you before, it will bother you through the rest of this article.)
Well played!
A lack of styling does not mean a good sense of balance.
It is ugly but highly legible. Which is just fine for the kinds of functional engraving it's meant for.
Both of which are objectively desirable qualities of a font with massive control panels as its native habitat.
Except for the terrible, terrible ‘0’, which looks more or less identical to the ‘O’. IIRC sometimes similar fonts had a strike-through 0 for legibility; I think the BBC Micro keyboard did, for instance.
https://i.imgur.com/SsH1DHt.png
Excellent article though.
Routed Gothic is a fairly good free version https://webonastick.com/fonts/routed-gothic/
The national park typeface is another pantograph router style font https://nationalparktypeface.com/
Also links a number of variations.
Another font is “Simplex”, which I think is often still found in CAD products.
https://cstools.asme.org/csconnect/CommitteePages.cfm?Commit...
…i.e. British! :P
(Sorry couldn’t resist)
I think I have this font indelibly burned into my brain from a childhood of using 8-bit computers.
Honestly it feels like it ought to be a coffee-table book. I'd buy it.
Gorton sold machines that solved problems.
Typography today is a celebration of self.
Nice article though, an interesting anthropological dive and perhaps the starting point for some research.
"Gorton is a decidedly toy-like, amateurish font deployed to for some of the most challenging type jobs: nuclear reactors, power plants, spacecraft. More than most other fonts, Gorton feels it’s been made by machines for machines – but in its use, it’s also the font that allows you to see so many human mistakes and imperfections.
"...Gorton also feels mistake-friendly. The strange limitations of Gorton mean that some of the transgressions of other fonts don’t apply here... Sure, there are really bad renditions that are inexcusable. But most of the time, the imperfections and bad decisions are what makes Gorton come alive. They don’t feel like a profound misunderstandings of typography, typesetting, or Gorton itself. They don’t feel like abuses or aberrations. No, they feel exactly how Gorton was supposed to be used – haphazardly, without much care, to solve a problem and walk away...
"The transgressions are not really transgressions. They all feel honest. The font and its siblings just show up to work without pretense, without ego, without even sporting a nametag. Gorton isn’t meant to be admired, celebrated, treasured. It’s meant to do some hard work and never take credit for it."
Plenty of parallels here to software work and the seasoned advice you hear about our craft. "Worse is better". "Don't let perfect be the enemy of good". It's about loving your trusty tools, imperfect as they may be.
