Gotham
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How to use
Gotham
The bold architectural capitals that inspired the iconic Gotham typeface are merely the cornerstone of a versatile family of fonts. Four different widths in a range of weights, plus deep character sets, extended language support, and versions for different media, combine to make Gotham a powerful and indispensable design.
Each of the four widths in the Gotham family contains the same eight weights, from Thin to Ultra, each provided in both roman and italic. Gotham maintains visually consistent intervals between its weights, to ensure that every style has a heavier counterpart that provides the same degree of emphasis.
For every weight of Gotham, the style that’s two steps heavier has sufficient visual contrast to serve as a boldface:
The same goes for Gotham Condensed, which has an additional Extra Black weight between its Black and Ultra styles:
Gotham ScreenSmart is designed for on-screen text. To emphasize any of its styles, use the weight that’s two steps heavier:
Use Gotham’s italics to distinguish text without changing its weight:
An unmannered sans serif with a large lowercase, clear gestures, and generous fit, Gotham is naturally at home in the widest range of sizes. Owing to its short ascenders and descenders, Gotham sits ‘large on the body,’ appearing bigger than expected at text sizes, and inviting tight leading.
The following tables offer some conservative guidelines for the smallest sizes at which the fonts can comfortably be reproduced and read, assuming typical reading conditions, and conventional contrast between type and background colors. The recommendations for sizes on screen are based on the coarser resolutions of older, entry-level monitors: at the higher resolutions available on modern phones, tablets, and laptops, type is viable at even smaller sizes.
Each of Gotham’s four widths — Regular, Narrow, Extra Narrow, and Condensed — is divided into two packages: a ‘1’ package with the central weights from Light to Bold, and a ‘2’ package with the peripherally lightest and darkest weights. All four of Gotham’s widths are available as ScreenSmart fonts, specifically designed for use on screen at text sizes, and engineered to deliver superior rendering in web browsers.
Text/Headlines
Text/Headlines
Text/Headlines
Text/Headlines
ScreenSmart® (SSm) fonts, designed for web and mobile applications, are engineered to work on screen at text sizes.
Text
Text
2.4Normalizing Stroke Weights
Gotham’s most delicate styles, included in the Gotham 2 package, can be used in concert to give the appearance of a consistent stroke weight across a range of sizes. As a rule of thumb for Gotham, try moving one weight heavier at half the point size, two weights heavier at one third the size, and three weights heavier at one fifth the size. As always, keep in mind that smaller type generally benefits from a little extra letterspacing, and a bump to its point size.
Gotham has four types of numbers: lining figures, tabular figures for setting numbers in columns, fractions and fraction parts, and superscripts and subscripts.
Gotham has features that make it easier to use tabular figures when designing data-heavy settings such as charts, tables, menus, and reports, as well as digital applications that show dynamic data such as prices, statistics, product numbers, timetables, account numbers, points, or scores.
Many of Gotham’s special characters and alternates are grouped into Stylistic Sets, an OpenType feature available in many applications that makes it easier to apply related substitutions together.
5.1Stylistic Sets
5.2Additional Characters
Gotham automatically adjusts spacing to improve typography.
6.1Kerning
Gotham is spaced and kerned to perform in most circumstances without the need for manual intervention. In applications that offer multiple options for kerning type, always use the default kerning that’s native to the typefaces (labeled auto in Illustrator, and metrics in InDesign) — never use the setting for optical kerning.
So-called ‘optical kerning’ was originally developed as an automated assist for fonts that lack kerning. But applied to a professional typeface, it overrides the visual decisions made by the font’s designers, and instead spaces characters using a mathematical model. It routinely misjudges common pairs, ignores important context, and misaligns tabular figures, creating erratic and disruptive rhythms. Because its algorithms are subject to change with each software update, ‘optical kerning’ can cause text to be reflowed without notice.
Gotham features H&Co’s Expanded Latin, Cyrillic, and Greek character sets.
Gotham supports 564 languages including Afrikaans, Albanian, Alsatian, Azerbaijani, Basque, Belarusian, Bosnian, Breton, Bulgarian, Catalan, Cebuano, Corsican, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, Estonian, Faroese, Fijian, Filipino, Finnish, French, Frisian, Friulian, Galician, German, Greek, Hungarian, Icelandic, Indonesian, Irish, Italian, Kazakh, Kurdish, Kyrgyz, Latvian, Lithuanian, Luxembourgeois, Malagasy, Malay, Maltese, Norwegian, Oromo, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Sardinian, Scots Gaelic, Serbian, Slovak, Slovene, Spanish, Swahili, Swedish, Tagalog, Turkish, Turkmen, Ukrainian, Uzbek, Welsh, and Zulu.
7.1Bulgarian Localization
Gotham includes Cyrillic localizations for Bulgarian. In applications that support language tagging, Bulgarian text (tagged bgr) will substitute local variants of the roman and italic characters Ф, в, г, д, ж, и, й, к, п, т, ц, ш, щ, and ю.
7.2Serbian and Macedonian Localization
Gotham also includes Cyrillic localizations for Serbian and Macedonian. In applications that support language tagging, text tagged srb or mkd will use local variants of the roman and italic character б.
