Gator Font

Publisher: Canada Type

Cooper Black's second coming to American design in the mid-sixties, after almost four decades of rest, can arguably be credited with (or, depending on style ideology, blamed for) the cause and effect that activated the whole art nouveau pop poster jam of the 1960s and 1970s. By the early 1970s, though Cooper Black still held its popular status (and, for better or for even worse, still does), numerous so-called hippie and funk faces were contending for packaging and paper area. The American development of the genre would trip deeper into psychedelia, drawing on an abundant history of flared, thrived and rounded style up until all of it diminished and came to a stop a few years into the 1980s. But the European (especially German) response to that entire display type trend remained for the many part cool and reserved, drawing more on standard art nouveau and art deco sources instead of the endless container of originalities being soaked the other side of the pond. Among the amusing actions to the "hamburgering" of typography was Friedrich Poppl's Poppl Heavy, carried out in 1972, when Cooper Black was commemorating its 50th anniversary. It is provided here in a fresh digitization under the name Gator (a tongue-in-cheek recommendation to Ray Kroc, the dad of the junk food chain).

To borrow the title of a classic rock album, Gator is meaty, beaty, huge and bouncy. It is among the finest examples of how expressively animated a thick brush can be, and one of the better substitutes to the much worn-out Cooper Black.

Gator is available in all popular font formats, and sports an extended character set covering most of Latin-based languages. Lots of alternates and ligatures are consisted of in the font.