Douglas Thomas is a graphic designer and type historian. He holds a Masters of Art in History from the University of Chicago. He has taught graphic design at Brigham Young University and the Maryland Institute College of Art. He is the author of “Recasting Franklin as Printer” in Benjamin Franklin’s Intellectual World, published by Fairleigh Dickinson University Press (2012). His design work has been featured in Communication Arts, Print, and Graphis. He lives in Baltimore, Maryland.
Ellen Lupton is a writer, graphic designer, and director of the Graphic Design MFA program at Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA) and of the Center for Design Thinking. As curator of contemporary design at Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum since 1992, she has produced numerous exhibitions and books, and she has published several books with PAPress, including Design Culture Now; Inside Design Now; Graphic Design: The New Basics; Thinking with Type; Type on Screen; D.I.Y.: Design It Yourself; and D.I.Y. Kids.
"Anyone who loved "Helvetica" will enjoy this look at the history
and widespread use of the typeface Futura, which you won't be able
to stop noticing after you've read Douglas Thomas's excellent
book."
- Fast Company's Co.Design
"Futura's ubiquity makes Never Use Futura an essential handbook on
the way the modern world looks and how we read its words."
- PopMatters
"It tells a smart, incisive story about the way one typeface became
woven into our cultural sentiments and movements."
- Design Observer
"Never Use Futura is well written, entertaining, and
informative."
- Technical Communication
"Never Use Futura, by Douglas Thomas, is an incredibly thorough
exploration and investigation of Futura, a bold alternative to the
perhaps equally popular (and equally divisive) Helvetica. In short,
it puts Futura in social and historical context. Aside from being
quite fascinating in subject, I found the design and layout to be
absolutely beautiful - another reason why Never Use Futura is easy
to pick up and surprisingly hard to put down."
- Typo-Graphical
"This engaging new book by Douglas Thomas, a graphic designer and
historian, is a biography of the typeface that explores what its
wide usage means and why it is so popular."
- Architecture Boston magazine
"Thomas offers a thoroughly researched, exhaustively documented
story of a typeface that is so ubiquitous that to remove it would
be to erase much of what today's world looks like. The book is
extremely readable, with a breezy style and an almost gossipy, "did
you know" tone. The book would be a terrific source of information
for graduate students who want a semiotic analysis of a style or
genre, or a researcher wanting to trace the influence of a
particular motif through various iterations. Thomas does just that
with his recounting of artist Barbara Kruger's use of a 1946 movie
poster for her style standards and then the appropriation of Kruger
by others, including the fashion brand Supreme. Never before has
font design moved so prominently into the psyche of the common
person. This book both reflects and accelerates that trend."
- Choice
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