The Story of: Eagle Bold

   Typography is precise, artistic, and expressive. The political moods of an era can heavily influence how typographers reach their design goals. This article explores the environment surrounding type designer Morris Fuller Benton in his progress towards creating the font Eagle Bold for use by the National Recovery Administration.

Eagle Bold in use on the NRA's famous "Blue Eagle" poster.

 Morris struck a proud, severe figure, his brow perpetually furrowed over deep-set, narrowed eyes. His thin hair was kept neatly parted and combed directly down the center, pasted tightly to his scalp as if it were painted on. His upper lip was clean-shaven, but every now and again he’d think fondly of his younger years as a student at Cornell University, pruning the full and noble mustache of a modern man, one ready to enter the world of the early 20th century and succeed. And succeed, Benton did. From 1900 to 1937, he was the chief type designer at American Type Founders, one of the most well-known type foundries in the country.

Morris Fuller Benton (Date Unknown)

    He followed after his father (L.B. Benton), inventor of the world-changing pantographic punch-cutter, which allowed for mass production and scaling of type matrices to a level never before seen in typesetting. Both he and his son were both mechanical engineers initially, starting their work in type design after they left college, which instilled into Morris a priority for mechanical precision and the development of type foundry methods instead of type itself. His father’s pantograph allowed for type founders to scale type automatically rather than having to hand-carve new sizes—this drove Benton to design his fonts to be attractive at many sizes rather than be designed for one size alone. All throughout his work, Benton’s type was an example of not only precision, but an understanding of the mechanics he used to overcome previous pitfalls in typography. [1]

These designs live on in many popular typefaces. He created the exceedingly popular Century series, along with Franklin Gothic and hundreds more. Eventually, he would be credited for the design of over 200 fonts. [2] 

    When the Depression struck, the United States Government took it upon themselves to construct a plan for getting the economy working again. In 1933, under FDR’s pen, the National Industrial Recovery Act came to pass. Through this bill was born the National Recovery Administration, a government agency built to assist businesses in the creation of a stable economy. The NRA took hold of land during the Dustbowl and converted it into Soil Conservation Districts to help alleviate the crisis, paid farmers not to plant crops that were in surplus, and encouraged planting of trees in fields abandoned by demoralized farmers in order to anchor the soil. This heavy intervention into the free market was championed by some and compared to fascism by others.

    As a government in the 1930s, there wasn’t much by way of direct government-to-populace communication besides occasional radio broadcasts and the mass-distributed poster. The question at hand for the NRA at this point was how to make small businesses both aware of the NRA’s existence and, more challengingly, willing to comply with the codes set forth. Solving this problem was left to the NRA’s advertising art director, Charles T. Coiner. He conceptualized the “Blue Eagle” logo, designing a simple, geometric design of a blue eagle holding a gear and lightning bolts to symbolize the authority and determination of the NRA to defeat economic woes. [3]

"We Do Our Part."

   The Eagle’s design was built on simple geometry and designed to be immediately recognizable. To complement the simple, bold design of the Blue Eagle, they were in need of a font. A seasoned typographer named Morris F. Benton initially proposed using his very own Novel Gothic, an eccentric typeface with thick lines, sharp angles, and an affinity for triangles. This was rejected, and a dejected Morris headed back to the drawing board, presumably cursing himself for shaving the mustache which loaned him so much confidence in his early years.

Novel Gothic in use.
© 1970 Columbia Records. License: All Rights Reserved.

Our fun-loving gal, Novel Gothic.

    
   Morris Fuller Benton knew that his creation, Novel Gothic, wasn’t far from the final product. The NRA needed something proud, authoritative, and patriotic. Novel had a sharp, eccentric feeling about it. The perfectly circular O, its N like a cartoon lightning bolt, and the curious tapering of the T bar were all aspects that undeniably made it visible. These, however, were not aspects that the NRA wanted to include in their image. Consider the V, its twin lines soaring yet ending on a strange angle which contrasted heavily with the flat lines of its surrounding letters. The triangular bar in H and E was a bold move that fell flat in how it broke up the negative space within the glyph. The final product which brewed in Morris’ mind would eliminate these issues and be a confident all-capital typeface which, on the NRA poster, would announce the presence of a strong-handed, nationalist agency with a mission to end the Depression and get everyone back to work, as FDR promised. [4]

Changes from Novel Gothic to Eagle Bold.

     
    First, Morris got rid of the triangular bar motif. It was unprofessional for a government logo and needed to be dealt with. He replaced each of these with a conventional straight, thick rectangle, no fuss, no frills. Our A, H, F, and E were now in working order to represent the voice of the United States. Next, our man Morris stopped to think. He wondered how much eccentricity he could keep in this typeface without making it look silly. After some consideration, he decided to leave M, N, and Z mostly alone. They were noticeably severe in their angularity, but our proud American typographer knew that if those Bauhaus guys up in Germany could do it then so could he. Fight fire with fire, right? Beyond these changes, he eliminated the angled terminals on letters like K, R, W, V, and J. These terminals were now aligned with the baseline, easing Eagle's legibility and flow and tightening the typeface’s use of the space around it. All in all, Novel was out. It looked clumsy and unstable compared to the new typeface’s structural integrity. All that it needed was a name, and he’d submit it to the NRA advertising art board and let Charlie Coiner have a whack at it. When he walked in the door, samples of Eagle tucked under his arm, he knew that he had made something beautiful.

Eagle Bold initially only contained capital letters.

   
   Eagle is still in use, in logos such as Cartoon Network's (1992–2004) and The Onion’s (1988–now). It was expanded, and lowercase letters added, in the late 80s and early 90s by David Berlow and Jonathan Corum. [5]