2013.02.11
About this font
The Brooklyn typeface started its life in an architectural model….
In April 2007, I got a call from a favorite client, Michael Bierut at Pentagram in Manhattan, asking if I could come in to talk about a project for a new architectural development. The project turned out to be the Atlantic Yards project, a massive undertaking involving a sports arena, an office block, and hundreds of housing units, all designed by the great American architect Frank Gehry.
I was shown photos of the model for the project which included a wonderfully twisty and turny tower, a stack-of-blocks-block-of-flats, and an arena which looked as though it was to be covered with blue metal post-it notes.
While I couldn’t take the photos with me, I kept the images in my head, and made sketches for a type system to match the sprawling architectural plan, with angular sans, serif, slab, and octagonal variants. I built a rough grid of 8 type masters, which were manipulated in Superpolator to create a huge number of stylistic and weight variants.
It was decided that the first sub-family to be developed would be the Sport variant, an octagonal sans for use specifically in the sports arena. The skeleton of the letterforms was made up of horizontal, vertical, and 45-degree diagonal lines, with just a few other “support” angles woven throughout, to take the fonts away from a strict “constructed” appearance.
I worked out a light and heavy master, with intermediate instances rough-generated and corrected.
We thought that Stencil version would come in handy, considering the type’s inteded use in signage, and stylistically, it looked pretty great, and echoed some of Gehry’s architectural details.
The font families were delivered as Brooklyn Sport and Sport Stencil in December 2007.
In March 2008, the construction of all but the sports arena was delayed until the slowing economy picked up. In June 2009, Frank Gehry left the project and a new arena designed by SHoP Architects on a plan by Ellerbe Becket. The one thing that didn’t change? The Brooklyn Sport typeface.
After a few years of exclusivity, we now have the rights to release Brooklyn. I set about tidying up the design, perfecting the angles and stroke weights, and designing new versions of several letters, to differentiate Brooklyn from its precursor.
We’re happy to finally make Brooklyn available for wide use after such an interesting journey through the machinations of New York City real estate and civic politics.
- Features
- Small Caps
- Case Sensitive Layout
& ISO Codepages
ISO 8859-1
Latin1
Afrikaans, Albanian, Basque, Breton, Catalan, Danish, English (UK and US), Faroese, Galician, German, Icelandic, Irish (new orthography), Italian, Kurdish (The Kurdish Unified Alphabet), Latin (basic classical orthography), Leonese, Luxembourgish (basic classical orthography), Norwegian (Bokmål and Nynorsk), Occitan, Portuguese (Portuguese and Brazilian), Rhaeto-Romanic, Scottish Gaelic, Spanish, Swahili, Swedish, Walloon
ISO 8859-2
Latin2
Bosnian, Croatian, Czech, German, Hungarian, Polish, Romanian, Serbian (when in the Latin script), Slovak, Slovene, Upper Sorbian, and Lower Sorbian.
ISO 8859-3
Latin3
Esperanto, Maltese, Turkish
ISO 8859-4
Latin4
Estonian, Latvian, Lithuanian, Greenlandic, Sami
ISO 8859-9
Latin5
Turkish
ISO 8859-10
Latin6
Nordic languages
License Table
| Base License | = | 1 to 3 Computers | |
| Base License | x 2 | = | 4 to 8 Computers |
| Base License | x 3 | = | 9 to 15 Computers |
| Base License | x 4 | = | 16 to 25 Computers |
| Base License | x 5 | = | 26 to 40 Computers |
| Base License | x 6 | = | 41 to 60 Computers |
| Base License | x 7 | = | 61 to 85 Computers |
| Base License | x 8 | = | 86 to 115 Computers |
| Base License | x 10 | = | 116 to 155 Computers |
| Base License | x 12 | = | 156 to 205 Computers |
| Base License | x 14 | = | 206 to 265 Computers |
| Base License | x 16 | = | 266 to 335 Computers |
| Base License | x 18 | = | 336 to 415 Computers |
| Base License | x 20 | = | 416 to 505 Computers |
| Base License | x 25 | = | 506 to 625 Computers |
| Base License | x 30 | = | 626 to 775 Computers |
| Base License | x 37 | = | 776 to 1000 Computers |
| Base License | x 45 | = | 1001 to 1325 Computers |
| Base License | x 55 | = | 1326 to 1800 Computers |
| Base License | x 67 | = | 1801 to 2500 Computers |
| Base License | x 80 | = | 2501 to 3500 Computers |
| Base License | x 100 | = | 3501 to 5000 Computers |
| Base License | x 125 | = | 5001 to 7500 Computers |
| Base License | x 150 | = | 7501 to 12500 Computers |
| Base License | x 200 | = | 12501 to ∞ Computers |
| Supplemental licensing | |||
| Base License | x 3 | = | Web font embedding |
| Base License | x 5 | = | Dynamic embedding |
Constellation End User License Agreement / Version 1.5, April 2013
This is an agreement between you, the purchaser, and Constellation. In accepting the terms of this agreement, you acknowledge understanding and promise to comply with its terms. If you do not accept the terms, please do not complete the purchase transaction.
What you are purchasing from Constellation is the license to use digital typeface software – hereafter “fonts” – on a certain number of computers within your organization; you are not purchasing the copyright to the design of the fonts, but the rights to use the fonts.
The fonts are provided in CFF-flavored OpenType (OTF) format. Additional formats are available upon request, and may require the purchase of supplemental licensing.
When purchasing licensing for fonts, you may use the fonts on the maximum number of computers within your organization as specified in the license table. You can purchase additional licenses at any time, which grant you the rights to use the fonts on additional computers.
The fonts may be embedded in secure read-only documents, such as Portable Document Format (PDF), Flash files (including sIFR), Word or PowerPoint.
The fonts may not be used with any webfont replacement technologies without the purchase of supplemental web font licensing. Webfonts are provided in WOFF and EOT formats.
The fonts may not be used in any standalone software packages, such as iOS or Android applications, without the purchase of supplemental dynamic embedding licensing.
You may not distribute the fonts to people outside of your organization. A copy of the fonts may be sent as part of a file release to a prepress bureau, if absolutely necessary.
You may not modify, convert, adapt, decompile, or otherwise reverse engineer or create derivative works of the fonts without written consent.
We have done everything we can to produce our fonts to the highest and most up-to-date technical standards, and we test the fonts extensively in the latest versions of technically-compliant applications. If you do experience any difficulties with our fonts, we will work with you to resolve any technical issues in the fonts. If, after we have worked to resolve any technical issues, you are still not satisfied with our software, we will be pleased to refund your money, which shall be the limit of our liability in this transaction.
We grant the rights of use of our fonts to you in good faith, and request that you adhere to the terms of this agreement to the best of your ability, and in good faith.
Constellation is a copyright of Village Type & Design LLC.
Version 1.0 ♥
