Whitney
Sans Serif font
Designer: Tobias Frere-Jones
Designed in 2004
Classification: Humanist sans Serif
History of Whitney
The typeface Whitney was originally created for New York’s
Whitney Museum by Tobias Frere-Jones. With how the typeface was designed, it
works well with both compact writing for small print and larger signage. The
reason the Whitney Museum’s staff wanted a new typeface for the graphical
language inside the museum was originally for future plans. The museum was
going to be relocated to a different building that was designed specifically
for the museum. With this move coming in the future, the people running the
museum wanted to create a new typeface identity that they would implement with
the move. With the new font project laid out, Tobias Frere-Jones worked closely
with the designers and staff of the Whitney. The original idea behind the shape
of the font actually came from one sentence. The sentence came up during the
first meeting about the concept of the new typeface. The sentence was “It would be much easier to present the
history of art as a simplistic line – but that’s not the Whitney”. This
meant that the font they wanted wasn’t going to be a simple, straight font.
They wanted it to have some character to it, and they wanted that character to
be the same character that is found with the Whitney. With this, they proceeded
to look at other ways that lines could be looked at. Landing on the idea of a
zig zag line, they started making their font. After figuring the idea of the
zig zag to drive the main influence of the font, the Whitney decided they
wanted to work with the idea of using reproductions of art to show people about
new additions to their museum, as they had done in the past. After giving in
and decided to go with the single image approach that the Whitney wanted,
Frere-Jones decided to work with the empty space more so than the actual images
on the printing piece. From this idea came the creation of the ‘Responsive W’,
which is a W shape that can be adjusted to work with different pieces of art.
The shape can be slanted, folded, pushed, pulled, and many other forms of
manipulation in response to the piece of art that it is paired with. This
flexibility led to the creation of the W shaped grid. The W shaped grid allowed
text and imaged to be placed within the zig zag shape. With the variation of
sized of imaged or amount of text, the W shaped grid was flexible enough to change
its overall shape to accommodate for the variation in sizes. For example,
signage on walls of the Whitney could use these W shaped grids to mark exhibits
throughout the museum. The W shaped grid worked by having the word Whitney in
the left section of the ‘W’, or the first ‘V’ of the ‘W’. This space held the
word Whitney throughout the museum as a fixed element of these W shaped grids.
The second ‘V’ varied in size depending on the title or section of the museum
area or exhibit. The more text there was to fit in this section, the deeper the
‘V’ would be to accommodate the amount of text. This is where the flexibility
of the W shaped grid came in. Frere-Jones said that the reason behind this was
that there was a universal truth about this, that in order to show movement,
there has to be some fixed element. All of the design decisions impacted the
outcome of the font. Whitney as a typeface is a thin font with a lot of open
space. This is reflective of the W shaped grid that was developed alongside the
font for the museum.
2004
Whitney was created in 2004. During this year, many events
happened. President George W Bush was re-elected into office for his second
term. Facebook was released. The Statue of Liberty was reopened to the public
after being closed since Sept. 11, 2001. The first same sex marriage happened.
Shrek 2 came out, that’s a big deal. I don’t know how the events of this year
had any effect on the creation of this font.
Tobias Frere-Jones
Tobias Frere was born in 1970. He is an American type
designer who works in New York City, New York. Tobias Frere-Jones was a partner
with Jonathan Hoefler. Frere-Jones teaches typeface design at the Yale School
of Art. He received his BFA in 1992 from Rhode Island School of Design. After
receiving his BFA, he went to work for the Font Bureau, Inc. In his years at
the Font Bureau, he created many of the Font Bureau’s best known typefaces.
After his time with the Font Bureau, he left and began working with Jonathan
Hoefler. While partnered, the two of them worked on projects for The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times
Magazine, Nike, and more. He joined the Yale School of Art faculty in 1996
and has been teaching there since. In 2006, Frere-Jones won the Gerrit Noordzij
Prize. Throughout his entire career, Frere-Jones has designed over 700
typefaces. Among these are typefaces Gotham, Benton Gothic, Poynter Gothic,
Poynter Oldstyle, and Whitney.
Bibliography
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