This font is a free download, but some use is prohibited without contacting me first. Please abide by the readme which is included in the download! Thanks.
The Works Progress Administration (W.P.A.) was the largest agency of FDR's "New Deal", employing millions of people. Over 2,000 posters were produced by the W.P.A. to raise awareness and support the arts.
I have a lot of admiration for these posters and a style of sign painters' lettering (sometimes called “gas-pipe”) that was common in the U.S. during the 1930s-'40s. WPA Gothic gets much of its inspiration from this poster in particular. This FontStruction stays true to the sample’s simple letterforms, but the FontStruct grid does present a few limitations. For more refined typefaces in this style check out DDC Hardware, Futura Display, FF Golden Gate Gothic, Refrigerator, and MVB Solano Gothic by some of my favorite type designers, two of which (Parkinson and Van Bronkhorst) are East Bay natives.
WPA Gothic has a few alternate glyphs hanging out in the Extended Latin slots with more to come.
To get a look at the typeface outside the confines of the FontStruct sampler, here's a sample poster.
May 25, 2008: Released a variation with low-waisted "deco" caps.
2019: 10 year anniversary update!
– Loosened the spacing a tad more.
– Added a few punctuation marks, including dashes, bullets, and inverted question/exclamation marks.
– Tightened ‘f’ spacing.
– Lengthened the quotes and apostrophes. They were so wee!
– And I fixed that Å! It’s not pretty, but it’s a ring.
A serif font made of dots. Suggestions are welcome.
UPDATES:
07/06/13-07/07/13 I went over the font and tidied it up. Adjusted spacing on letters like V and q, added or erased dots to letters such as a and f, made the tittles and such bigger, and refined letters like O and g. V1.2.0
10/01/13 More refining, more refining... Each time I come back, I see things that need improving. V1.3.0
12/19/13 My biggest update yet (literally). I've increased the circles' size from two to four units, making overshoots and much more possible. Every character has been reworked to fit the new size, and the font is now generally more condensed. V2.0
05/14/14 Tweaked many shapes with the nudge tool, and adjusted the 4 to have serifs and a lower crossbar. V2.1
05/17/14 Big edit today. A large portion of the lowercase, as well as some of the uppercase, has been narrowed to match the rest of the font.
05/21/14 M, N and accents updated a bit more.
09/27/18 Fixed the acute on ý (it was previously a grave).