Morris Fuller Benton
| Morris Fuller Benton | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| Born |
November 30, 1872 Milwaukee, Wisconsin |
| Died | June 30, 1948 (aged 75) Morristown, New Jersey |
| Alma mater | Cornell University |
| Occupation | Type designer, business executive |
| Employer | American Type Founders |
Morris Fuller Benton (November 30, 1872 – June 30, 1948) was an American typeface designer who headed the design department of the American Type Founders (ATF), for which he was the chief type designer from 1900 to 1937.
Many of Benton's designs, such as his large family of related sans-serif or "gothic" typefaces, including Alternate Gothic, Franklin Gothic, and News Gothic, are still in everyday use.
Benton is credited as America's most prolific designer of metal type, having (with his team) completed 221 typefaces, including revivals of historical models like Bodoni and Cloister, original designs such as Hobo, Bank Gothic, and Broadway and adding new weights to existing faces such as Century, Goudy Old Style and Cheltenham. Although he did not invent the concept, Benton working at ATF pioneered the concept of large typeface families of designs, allowing consistency of appearance in different sizes, widths and weights. This allowed ATF to capitalise on a successful typeface's popularity and allow coherent layout and graphic design; its 1923 specimen book described its approach of creating families which could allow advertisers to "talk at command with varying emphasis and orchestral power [rather than using] a medley of display types."
It must be noted that Benton worked as the leader of a team of designers responsible for creating a basic design and then adapting it to different sizes and weights, and so did not work alone, but Benton considered his work as a designer important and wrote a brief list of typefaces he considered his most important work in 1936, shortly before his retirement. Benton was relatively retiring in life: a 1936 interview described him as "one of the most difficult men to interview I have ever talked to...try to pin some honour on him, or give him credit for some achievement, and he will modestly sidestep with the remark that "Lady Luck helped me a lot there!"."
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