Template Gothic is an important milestone in the history of digital fonts because of its popularity but also because of the designer's unique voice and the vernacular source he used as inspiration—a sign posted in his neighborhood laundromat. Licensed and promoted by Emigre, Inc., Template Gothic was ubiquitous by the end of the 1990s, representing the aesthetic of imperfection beloved by certain designers during the grunge era. Deck, like other typographers of the time, spoke of his desire to abandon the perfection of modernist letterforms: "I was inspired to design a face that looked as if it had suffered the distortive ravages of photomechanical reproduction." His typeface reflects "more truly the imperfect language of an imperfect world, inhabited by imperfect beings."

Gallery label from

Standard Deviations, 2011.

Medium Digital typeface
Dimensions Variable
Credit Gift of Emigre, Inc.
Object number 1073.2010
Department Architecture & Design

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Font

A specific size and style of a typeface—for example, Arial 12-point bold, or Times New Roman 10-point italic. The term is often confused with typeface, which refers to the design or “look” of type or lettering.

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