There’s a new, fantastic Franklin Gothic alternative in town: American Grotesk by Klim Type Foundry.
In my earlier dive into Franklin Gothic alternatives I focused on affordable (and, in fact, free) alternatives. This time we’re at the other end of the spectrum because a 5-user, desktop-only licence of the American Grotesk collection (regular, condensed, and compressed) will set you back US$1,134.
But if you can afford that, it is totally worth it.
Graphic showing two columns of short text blocks and large heading and title text. The left column shows these in Franklin Gothic Book, Franklin Gothic Medium, and Franklin Gothic Heavy. The right column shows these in American Grotesk, American Grotesk Medium, and American Grotesk Black.
If you read American Grotesk’s design information, you’ll learn that some core aspects of Franklin Gothic’s identity were lost when it was translated from metal type to photo typesetting by the ITC type foundry in 1980.
Screenshot from the American Grotesk design information webpage showing typeface samples comparing, in the left column, News Gothic to ITC Franklin Gothic Book and, in the right column, Franklin Gothic to ITC Franklin Gothic Heavy. The News Gothic and ITC Franklin Gothic Book characters have numbered call-outs on them to highlight their differences.
And then you’ll read about what type designer Kris Sowersby did to maintain Franklin Gothic’s original industrial machine feel in American Gothic. If you’re a type nerd like me, you’ll enjoy getting into all those details :)
Anyway, this follow-up to my original post is just to note that American Grotesk is an excellent and gorgeous “reprisal” of Franklin Gothic that everyone should be aware of.