I have Creative Cloud and trying to load Gotham fonts but they don't appear in the search

Forum|Forum|5 years ago
September 1, 2020
2 replies
37688 views

I am missing fonts on my computer and trying to update documents that my designer created. My computer is missing Gotham rounded bold and Gotham book. I know these exist and I should be able to load them via Adobe. I have a full license but don't understand why they are not available for me to download. Appreciate help with this issue so I don't have to disturb my designer who is on paternity leave. Thaknks

Missing font

Correct answer Dov Isaacs

The Gotham font family is not one of the font families supported by the Adobe Fonts service. There are literally at least hundreds of thousands of different fonts out there. The Adobe Fonts service provides only a very small subset of those from a limited number of font foundries.

Although some limited members of the Gotham font family are available for free download for personal only use (and from your description, your usage is definitely not “personal use” only, for any commercial use you need to buy a license from Hoefler & Co. at https://www.typography.com/fonts/gotham/styles. Note that these licenses can get quite expensive.

Andrew Strauss

Participating Frequently

Gotham is a typeface family designed by Tobias Frere-Jones, and was released by the Hoefler & Frere-Jones (H&FJ) typefoundry around 2000. Hoefler & Company (H&Cº) – now owned by Monotype – publish and license the typeface today.

If you have a licence to use Gotham, the only place that you could have purchased it was directly from H&FJ / H&Cº. It’s never been available from anywhere else: especially not from the original Adobe Type Library and the current Adobe Fonts service. The same applies to all other H&Cº typefaces. The chances of these H&Cº typefaces being made available on Adobe Fonts in the future is somewhat unlikely.

If you need to download new copies of the Gotham fonts that you’ve licensed, it’s best to contact Hoefler & Company directly:

• Website: https://www.typography.com/
• Telephone: +1 212 777 6640 (US Eastern Time)
• Email: support@typography.com

Just make sure to have copies of your original licences and receipts on hand. H&Cº has a reputation in the type industry of being very thorough about such matters.

I hope that answers your question. If not, please let me know.

Best regards
Andrew

–30–

ANDREW KEITH STRAUSS / ACTP / CTT+ / ACI / ACE / ACP

L

Lumigraphics

Legend

A Google search turns up numerous places to download Gotham, claiming that its free for personal use. I have no knowledge one way or the other, just saying that its available from more than just the foundry.

Andrew Strauss

Participating Frequently

You’re correct that internet searches will bring up sites that offer free downloads of Gotham. There are also sites that claim that Gotham is free for personal use.

But Hoefler & Company (H&Cº) will beg to disagree, just like Adobe would do so about freely-available copies of software like Photoshop being available online for download.

H&Cº have a long history of being especially proprietorial about their font licensing. Their licences have been much more specific than other typefoundries: even spelling out in the past precisely how tall characters could be if they were used to produce bitmap graphics (≤ 500 pixels). I’d have to refer back to my original Hoefler Type Foundry catalogues and specimens for precise details.

Unless new H&Cº owner Monotype have dramatically changed the licensing terms on H&Cº fonts, it’s reasonable to assume that the versions of Gotham freely available online are not there out of H&Cº’s own choice. If you’re a professional who intends to produce designs that use Gotham to make money, then it’ll be your responsibility to see that you have purchased the appropriate font licences from H&Cº.

The irony is that the letterforms that you find in Gotham are not especially original. If you look closely at American buildings dating back to the mid-20th century, you’ll notice similar letterforms being used. These letterforms were very popular in the architectural trade, because they were easy for architects and engineers to draw.

The reason why modern designers are required to license Gotham’s interpretation of these letterforms is because Tobias Frere-Jones decided to spend the time translating them into digital format. Gotham is the software product, and Monotype and H&Cº are the current licence owners.

One interesting side-effect: during the 2000s, Gotham became a very popular typeface along with mid-century geometric slab-serifs like Monotype’s Rockwell. Periodicals in New York – H&Cº’s home town – were the first mass-users, followed later by politicians. Nowadays, Gotham appears to be the default typeface used by American politicians for campaigning.

But not everyone could afford to license Gotham. Some designers noticed a remarkable similarity between Gotham’s geometric letterforms and those of the late Adrian Frutiger’s Avenir typeface, which was quietly released in 1988. Avenir was much more affordable – and its licensing terms far more relaxed – so it became increasingly popular as the ‘poor designer’s Gotham’.

Avenir is an excellent design in itself: it’s easy to think of Gotham as a version of Avenir with a larger overall x-height. What also helped is that Apple included Avenir as a standard system font for Mac OS X starting in the 2000s. And since many designers use Macintoshes, Avenir became a default choice over Gotham by the virtue of being preinstalled on all new Apple computers.