in play, run(s)

ernie missed the sunglasses memo i fear

TOP GUN (1986) dir. Tony Scott +IMDB Trivia (insp)

Futura (1927) [Daylight Fonts · Fonts In Use · Identifont] is one of my favorites out of the well-established sans serifs, but one thing that annoys me about it is how C and c have vertical terminals, while G and e have angled terminals.

Besides being internally inconsistent, I find the vertical terminals ugly. (I dislike Antique Olive (1962) [Daylight Fonts · Fonts In Use · Identifont] for the same reason, but at least it uses its vertical terminals consistently.)

I recently learned the reason for this (from the book Paul Renner: The Art of Typography): Futura was designed first and foremost for writing German. In German the letter c only occurs before h and k, and in traditional German blackletter typography, ch and ck are obligatory, inseparable ligatures.

Futura doesn't have joined ch/ck ligatures, but ch and ck were still cast on a single piece of metal, with a smaller gap between the c and h/k than between other letters. The vertical terminal on the c was necessary to allow these letters to be placed so close together.