Futura Flew to the Moon and Back

Futura, what does this typeface have that took it to the Moon and back? In July 1969, three American astronauts planted a memorial plaque on the Moon and the message was written in Futura. The whole world saw this moment and it is history.

But Futura started a long time before that. It was created in 1927 by a German named Paul Renner. This typeface was special because it has the same weight throughout all of the letters and looks like it was made by a machine. Typefaces made by hand like the script, have parts that are thick and thin and are harder to read. Whereas Futura doesn’t have variation in any parts of the letters. So, after World War I, the USA didn’t want to use anything Germans made and created several typefaces look like Futura and gave them different names. However, all of the newly created typefaces, everyone in the USA referred to them as Futura.

Futura became well used in the early 1960s because it was determined this typeface was easy to read. With that being said, from freeway signs to maps, instructions on the Apollo spacecraft, everything was written in Futura. NASA didn’t want to complicate anything for the astronauts, so all of the buttons, labels, food rations, tool kits, knobs, and instructions to do everything was written Futura. So, this is why Futura went to the Moon and back.

In October 2018 Douglas Thomas did a TED talk in San Francisco about Futura titled “How a typeface helped launched Apollo”. Phototypesetting is one of my past professions and I enjoy learning about different typefaces and how they came about.