Flight center gothic typeface11/3/2023 Saarinen and his team of architects had made edits to the letters, indicating where they wanted things changed. While studying Saarinen’s papers at Yale’s archive, Bierut and team found photostats of the lettering that had been pulled from various books. Derek, a bold, italic typeface designed in the late 19th century, had echoes of the slanting letters found in Raymond Lowry’s TWA logo, but as Bierut hinted, he and Sherman soon learned that while Saarinen might have been influenced by Derek, it wasn’t the exact lettering that was used throughout the terminal. “I immediately-and sort of incorrectly, as it turned out-identified the lettering style as a typeface called Derek,” Bierut says. Bierut and his team worked with type designer Nick Sherman to craft Flight Center Gothic, a faithful, but modern version of the hand-lettered type that was found throughout Saarinen’s building.īefore drawing a letter, Bierut and Sherman visited the TWA terminal at JFK where many of the original signs were still hanging. The original typographic drawings Flight Center Gothic is based on.Īfter remaining closed for decades, Saarinen’s terminal recently reopened as the TWA Hotel, a sleek homage to the architect’s midcentury design. ![]() ![]() “Of course a bold italic would be perfect for the jet age, wouldn’t it?” says Michael Bierut. It was designed to look fast, like a technological marvel. ![]() The hand-drawn signs scattered throughout the building featured a bold sans serif that tilted forward in an exaggerated italic. Inside, Saarinen’s team had crafted a typographic system that looked like flight, too. The shell roof of the Trans World Flight Center (TWA Center) swooped downward in angled pieces its shape echoed the outline of a fighter jet seen from head-on. In 1962, Eero Saarinen designed a building that looked like flight itself. The counters are now populated by food vendors selling paninis, fruit bowls, empanadas and falafel, plus an Intelligentsia coffee bar.Flight Center Gothic by Pentagram and Nick Shermanĭesigner: Michael Bierut and Nick Sherman To the left is the hotel check-in desk, in front of what used to be baggage claim, and to the right is the Departures Hall food hall, where travellers like myself dropped their bags and picked up their paper boarding passes. I’m greeted at the information desk with its Solari di Uldine split flap arrivals/departures board (one of two) by a woman outfitted in a neat-as-a-pin TWA uniform, hat at the perfect angle and scarf tied just so (she was later replaced by other greeters wearing pilot uniforms with gold epaulettes). (That the TWA colors and MAGA hats are both red and white is pure coincidence.) This version of American history is thrown into relief by the highly diverse staff working here, who thankfully keep the whole thing from turning into some kind of time travel cosplay.īut that doesn’t take away from how simply spectacular it looks how thrilling the pale, soaring, concrete ceilings and original Chili Pepper Red Carpet are to the eye. America’s many faults were hidden from view, and the hotel embodies a glamorous look back at a time that was very good indeed, but only for some. ![]() What couldn’t America do? Leading Nato and containing the Soviets, sending astronauts into space, building suburban dreamscapes and thousands of oversized cars made of American steel. This was during the height of American power at the peak of the American century.
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