Eurostile
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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| Category | Sans-serif |
|---|---|
| Designer(s) | Aldo Novarese, Akira Kobayashi |
| Foundry | Nebiolo |
| Date released | 1962 |
| Re-issuing foundries | Linotype, URW |
| Design based on | Microgramma |
| Variations | Microgramma Microstyle |
Eurostile (sometimes misspelled as Eurostyle) is a geometric sans-serif typeface designed by Aldo Novarese in 1962. Novarese originally made Eurostile for one of the best-known Italian foundries, Nebiolo, in Turin.
Eurostile was developed, because although the similar Microgramma came with a variety of weights, it had only upper-case letters. A decade after the creation of Microgramma, Novarese remedied this with the creation of Eurostile, which added lower-case letters, a bold condensed variant and an ultra narrow design called Eurostile Compact, for a total of seven fonts.
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[edit] Characteristics
Eurostile is a popular display font. Its linear nature suggests modern architecture, with an appeal both technical and functional. The squarish shapes with rounded corners evoke the appearance of television screens of the 1950s and 1960s. As such, it has found some popularity in contemporary graphic design, as well as in science fiction novel and film artwork.
[edit] URW version
In the URW version, there are also Greek, Cyrillic, subscript and superscript, box drawing characters. The family has 16 fonts in five weights and three widths, with condensed fonts on regular and heavy weights; extended fonts on regular and black weights; complementary oblique fonts on black, bold, heavy, heavy condensed, medium, regular, regular condensed.
[edit] Eurostile DisCaps
It is a small caps version. The family comes with one width in regular and bold weights, without obliques.
[edit] Eurostile Relief
It is a shadowed version of the font designed by URW Studio.
[edit] Eurostile Stencil
It is a stencil font based on URW's Eurostile black extended (D), designed by Achaz Reuss.
[edit] Linotype version
Linotype began distributing Eurostile decades ago, and during the early 1980s, it worked together with Adobe to digitize the fonts in PostScript format. During the digitization process, the super curves were flattened.
Although the font family is based on the Microgramma, some of the characters do not follow the styling of the family. The characters include non-letter characters like integral, infinity, pilcrow; letterlike symbols like @, copyright mark, registration mark; and accents such as cedilla and the tilde.
The family includes ten fonts in three weights and three widths. Condensed and Extended fonts do not have oblique or demi weight counterparts. It supports ISO Adobe 2 character sets.
[edit] Eurostile LT
It is a variant of Eurostile by Linotype. It uses squarer designs non-letter characters like integral, infinity, pilcrow; letterlike symbols like @, copyright mark, registration mark; accents such as cedilla and the tilde. However, the circle in circled letters (@, Ω) remained circular, which aren't fixed until Eurostile Next. The asterisk was redesigned to use six points instead of five.
The family includes 11 fonts, adding an Outline Bold font to the original Eurostile family by Linotype. It supports ISO Adobe 2,Adobe CE, Latin extended character sets.
[edit] Eurostile Next
It is an optically-rescaled and redesigned version of the original font family, designed by Akira Kobayashi. The redesign was based on the specimens of the original metal fonts.
Redesigned features include restoring the super curve lost in the previous film and digital versions, reduced stroke weight difference between the upper and lowercase letters, type-sensitive accents and letterlike symbols (ç, É, @, €). In addition, Kobayashi added new Light and Ultra Light weights to complement the Extended, Normal, and Condensed variations within the family, added small caps letters and figures, unicase alternate characters.[1]
The family consists of five weights with three widths each, without oblique fonts. It supports ISO Adobe 2,Adobe CE, Latin extended character sets. OpenType features include small caps, tabular and proportional figures, superior and inferior numerals, diagonal fractions, and ordinals.
[edit] Eurostile Candy
It is a variant of Eurostile Next with rounded corners. Extra strokes in letters such as a, s, or t, are removed. Joints in letters such as n and r have been simplified to create even more square shapes.
The family consists of three weights (regular, semi bold, bold) in extended width, without oblique fonts. It supports ISO Adobe 2,Adobe CE, Latin extended character sets. Extra OpenType features found in Eurostile Next are not supported.
[edit] Eurostile Unicase
It is a variant of Eurostile Next with unicase letters. The family consists of one font (Regular) in extended width, without oblique fonts, but it has heavier weight than Eurostile Next Extended Bold. It supports ISO Adobe 2, Adobe CE, and Latin extended character sets. Extra OpenType features found in Eurostile Next are not supported.
[edit] Square 721
The Square 721 font from BitStream is very similar to Eurostile although its proportions are slightly different. Square 721 is available in 2 weights and 3 widths each.
[edit] Europe
It is a variant of Eurostile with designed at TypeMarket in 1992–1993 by Alexey Kustov. The family includes 16 fonts, adding Shadow Demi, Shadow Oblique, and the missing oblique counterparts to the original Linotype family. It supports Cyrillic characters.
[edit] Availability
Eurostile and Eurostile Bold (URW versions) were distributed with Microsoft Office 97, Microsoft Works 2002, Microsoft Home Publishing 99, Microsoft TrueType Font Pack 2. Electronic versions of these and all other Eurostile typefaces can also be purchased on-line directly from Linotype GmbH and URW in several systems, including OpenType, TrueType and PostScript.
[edit] Usages
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Lists of miscellaneous information should be avoided. Please relocate any relevant information into appropriate sections or articles. (November 2009) |
Eurostile Extended has been used extensively in music, where it has featured in album cover artwork from U2, Ash, The Supernaturals, Eminem and several dance compilations from Warner. Eurostile Extended 2 can also be seen in the cover artwork for the 1998 Marilyn Manson album "Mechanical Animals".
Variations of Eurostile are popular in television. The BBC One holding slides from 1976-83 were in Eurostile, and it is also used by Speed Channel programs since 2007 in credits, news ticker, subtitles. Eurostile bold condensed was used in the later logo of the TVS news programme Coast to Coast. It was also used for Tyne Tees Television's idents from 1969 to 1989.
Eurostile is also found in several video games such as Homeworld, Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon, Splinter Cell and Driv3r.
In the music business, it has also been used by Westlife until their album Coast to Coast and is currently used by Argentine Pop band Bandana & electrotango band Tanghetto as complementary typography to the band's logo.
Eurostile can also be seen in the fashion world, as it is the font type for the widely known (and commonly mis-interpreted) clothing company fcuk, or French Connection — United Kingdom. It's also the corporate branding for French Printemps department store chain.
Eurostile was the primary font used in the science fiction series UFO, created by Gerry Anderson in 1969. All of the vehicles and clothing bearing the logo of the series' secret organization SHADO used the font, in addition to the main titles.
Eurostile is also used on most FIA GT cars for the car numbers, and in company logos such as those for Toshiba and Diadora.
It is a corporate branding font for Toshiba. The retail version was authorized by Toshiba Europe GmbH to URW, where Eurostile Black OT was sold.[2]
It is also often used on the sides of British police vehicles for signwriting.
Eurostile is used in Canadian Journey series of Canadian dollar bank notes.[3]
Eurostile was the font used in The Amazing Race from series 1 to 13. From series 14 and onwards, it will use Bank Gothic.
Eurostile was also used in the title of the television show Star Trek Enterprise
Eurostile Extended Bold is also used in the CASIO and Roland Corporation JUNO logos.
Eurostile is used for the logo of the Eurovision Song Contest
[edit] References
[edit] Sources
- URW's Eurostile page
- Eurostile Relief by URW++
- Eurostile Stencil by URW++
- Type Gallery — Eurostile
- Linotype's Eurostile page
- Eurostile LT Font Family — by Aldo Novarese
- Toshiba Brand Guidelines
- Myfonts: Square 721
- Microsoft Typography: Eurostile
- ParaType: Europe font
