According to her findings, Gotham was an ideal typeface for Obama only for its ability to seem well-suited in a variety of situations and not because of what the critics and professionals claimed to be its inherent attributes. In other words, Gotham would be the ideal typeface for any candidate. I was wondering how Gotham became the reason for such a massive success and while reading about it online, I came across a research paper ( Typeface Persona: Investigating Gotham’s Suitability for Obama’s 2008 Presidential Campaign) by Miriam M. Soon after the campaign's success, Gotham became the go-to font for all the politicians and nearly 69 political parties used it in the next campaign. In one of the episodes in the Netflix series, Abstract (S2E6- Jonathan Hoefler- Typeface Design), Scott explains that Gotham became the perfect choice for the CHANGE campaign as it spoke to the American values with its boldness, condor, and the honesty of the layout.

The Art Director of the campaign, Scott Thomas decided to use this bold, nicely spaced, modern typeface called Gotham, and the rest is history. The 2008 Obama presidential campaign was designed and launched with Gill Sans typeface, but it failed to gain Americans' trust and was sent back to the drawing board.

The font has an interesting story in terms of its insistent usage in political campaigns. The film introduced me to the Gotham typeface and its creators Jonathan Hoefler and Tobias Frere-Jones. In the last few years, I have found a new love for typefaces and their different creative, technical, and cultural aspects. A module from my previous semester called Advertising Design and Layout, taught by Professor Sandy Kedey, required me to watch a documentary film on Helvetica (A German San-serif typeface). I cannot emphasize enough how much it taught me about the art and usage of typeface design. More so for me-as the minimalism of the designs and the use of the typeface particularly intrigues me. Spring is at its peak. The whole city is covered with lush green grass, tiny dandelions, and signs of parties contesting the Ontario General Election 2022. Those simple signs are hard to miss as they are conspicuously placed every 10-20 meters.

Gotham typeface trend