Agency FB
- Designer Morris Fuller Benton
- Design foundry Unknown
- Source Font Bureau
The Agency FB’ typeface is a square gothic sans serif that is based on two weights of the typeface Bureau Agency. Agency FB is characterized by its straight or almost straight lines and sometimes curved corners with a low stroke contrast. This typeface features a boxy, squared design with narrow capitals. Agency FB is available in five weights and five widths with a total of twenty-five available styles. Agency FB is similar to the typefaces Interstate by Tobias Frere-Jones, Network Font by Joel Lozano and Keith Bates’ Keep Calm. Agency FB is available in both True Type and Open Type formats.
Agency FB History
The Agency FB font family is an expanded typeface family, based on two weights of Bureau Agency. The Agency FB typeface was designed in 1990 by David Berlow, based on Morris Fuller Benton’s 1932 ATF Agency Gothic’, which was a lone titling. Building on that original design from more than a half century earlier, Berlow saw possibilities in the squared, boxy forms and the monotone, narrow capitals that made up Agency Gothic. Berlow designed a lowercase set and added a bold to create Font Bureau Agency’, which was an immediate hit.
Recognizing the strengths of that new typeface, Berlow partnered with designers Tobias Frere-Jones and Jonathan Corum to expand Agency FB into a major series. From their work, five widths and five weights were created in the five year time frame spanning from 1990-95, adding versatility to the typeface that would make it suitable for a broader range of applications. For those who own the popular word processing program Microsoft Word 2010, the Agency FB typeface is one of the font options offered for end users to select when formatting documents.
References:
Monotype Imaging: David Berlow
Typedia: Square Gothic Fonts
Agency FB Usage
The Agency FB typeface is often described as boxy and masculine. It is perfect across a number of applications because it is super legible. End users of the Agency FB typeface recommend it for book, magazine, and other print media, as well as use as a web font. In the corporate sector, the Agency FB font, in various weights and widths, finds its way onto business cards and other printable materials—handouts, stationary, signage, billboards, ads and promotional copy, among other uses.
Although Agency FB may be used more often for headlines than for body text, it is also widely implemented for body text when displayed on screen, particularly the computer screen. This is due to the fact that interlaced displays tend to show twittering when displaying the finer details of classic serif text. The design of sans serif typefaces like Agency FB eliminates that problem.