I’ve heard that the URW version is the “best”, but I personally prefer using Adobe’s and Bitstreams together. The weights vary a little as do some of the details — traps and no traps — which I find important.

The best Futura money can buy

The most complete???

The URW package looks great. everything I want for a bundle price. Paul, I had seen the FuturaND version, but it’s awfully expensive since they make you buy each one separately (I think).

Tiffany, why do you prefer Adobe/Bitstream over URW?

Neufville claims most authenticity.

Futura ND was completely digitized anew from the original sources of the Bauersche Giesserei, now hold by FT Bauer in Barcelona.

Adobe for me - Open Type. Cross platform, so they can apply it after you’ve gone - good range - good cut - Chris Mitch

Because I already have licensed them. =^D

Careful, Adobe’s Futura has some problems Most of the other foundries’ versions do not have the egg-shaped rounds.

I was going to mention that. It was one of the earliest fonts Adobe released and it is not real good, especially the Heavy weight. I just took a look at a PDF of the current version on Adobe’s website. It’s not quite as bad as the samples that Erik Spiekermann shows, so it appears they have made some alterations since it was first released, but it’s still not great (in my opinion). The other weights aren’t as bad, but notice also that the italics are all just slanted romans, not optically adjusted. I’m partial to Bitstream’s cut, especially for text.

Yes, Adobe’s Futura surely isn’t that good at all, for example if you set it without linespacing (as was called “Kompress” in the days of metal type over here in germany) ascenders and descenders will overlap. That surely woudln’t have happened with metal type, so that’s a technical fault to Adobe Futura, at least to my understanding.
On the best version, that’s a bit down to personal taste i think, as the different digitizings have different approaches or emphasize different aspects and qualities of Futura:
The URW version seems to stress the somewhat elegant quality Futura has and appears pretty thin to me, whereas the Berthold BQ version seems much more stable and robust to me (and if you look at old prints of Futura, it surely had that quality as well and didn’t come across as the super-elegant thing we’re used to from cosmetics packagings and the like today!)
So my personal vote would be for the BQ-version if i had to buy it – the strange thing is Futura is one of the faces i love, admire and respect the most – but never use it! :-)

p.s. besoides the best digizings issue, it’s such a shame that the different optical sizes that were made for Futura metal didn’t survive into the digital age…

The Futura from EF and URW are identical in the basic design since they come from the same source. The URW version is in OpenType, has small caps, CE characters as well as Greek and Cyrillic (although these are very poor).

A.

Our web site designer is recommending Futura MdCn BT for a couple of uses, notably titles. I want to revise templates in our publications to match the web site, but our analysts’ needs are rather different from our web site designers....

Futura MdCn BT has about the ugliest micron char I’ve ever seen, and lacks all other Greek chars. The URW char set is much more complete. However, the Greek section is inexplicably missing a only few chars (Omega, Delta and mu), which are naturally the ones we use in formulas the most frequently. The Greek version of the font has all those chars, but loses many mathematical operators. *sigh*

EF’s Md Condensed has the Greek chars we need, the mathematical operators, and comes in ital, so that looks like the winner for now. I wish we could have small caps, too, but sometimes we have to be practical!

Don’t believe everything you read. The outline issues in Herr Spiekermann’s examples of Adobe’s version of Futura were fixed something like 15 years ago (maybe more, I’d have to do some digging).

Too bad he didn’t feel it necessary to add that clarification.

Cheers,

T

Have you fixed the dimension issues as well? As i remember, ascenders and descenders of Adobe’s version of Futura used to clash/overlap when set without additional linespacing (which – obviously – didn’t happen in lead/metal original Futura). At least to me that felt like an issue over the years…

Neue Futura (Futura ND) is the most complete version. The small caps were from the original drawings from Paul Renner. I have not had any problems with it in Font Book.