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Broadside Font

Designer: Rian Hughes
Publisher: Device

Designed by Rian Hughes, Broadside is a sans serif font household. This typeface has forty-two designs and was released by Device.

Broadside is a versatile, authoritative and functional family influenced by the sans serifs seen on '40s and '50s patriotic posters and duration advertising. It is offered in seven weights throughout condensed, typical and prolonged widths, each with reweighed italics.

The type from this period was really typically hand-drawn, and so varies significantly from poster to poster. Lots of American examples of this duration utilize a Photo-Lettering style called Murray Hill and its derivatives, although their UK counterparts, created by such luminaries as Abram Games or Tom Eckersley, are more stylistically diverse. Despite the fact that no single design is readily available to base a digitisation on, there are certain repeating stylistic peculiarities that offer the type its unique flavour, therefore the most fascinating examples from numerous sources were be combined for the last family.

Alternate brief descenders, permitting tighter line spacing, can be toggled on or off in the Opentype panel of Indesign or Illustrator.

Tabular and lining characters and a single-story 'a' are also readily available in all weights and styles.