How One Typeface Landed on the Moon
Futura started off as an avant-garde contribution to 1920s Modernism. But by the 1960s, it had become part of NASA’s authoritative image.
As Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong lifted off the lunar surface, they left behind these words: “Here men from planet Earth first set foot on the Moon July 1969, A.D. We came in peace for all mankind.” The lunar plaque is one of the great design objects of the 20th century, not necessarily because it of its aesthetic sensibility, but because of what it represents. The steel plate is deceptively simple. The monumental inscription, appropriately set in all capitals, sits underneath drawings of Earth’s two hemispheres and is followed by signatures of the astronauts and President Nixon. Futura, the typeface for all the text, was a design appropriate to the moment.
How did Futura end up on the moon? A look at design blogs, and the common design culture of quoting other designers’ work, might imply that the plaque designers were inspired by the film 2001: A Space Odyssey. Just a year earlier, 2001 had wowed audiences with its special effects, cosmic vision of the future, and advertising campaign conducted almost exclusively in Futura. Even the film’s iconic opening title mimicked Futura’s geometric lines and proportions.
While it wouldn’t have been the first time NASA had taken inspiration from the film industry, the design of the lunar plaque has little to do with the film 2001 (not least because Stanley Kubrick’s use of type as titling in the film is wildly inconsistent). At best, 2001’s use of Futura confirmed design directions made by the U.S. government decades before. In reality, Futura wasn’t just a ceremonial embellishment, or a sunny commentary on the goals and ethos of NASA, the Apollo missions, and the United States. Rather, Futura (or one of its American clones, like Spartan) preceded the space program as a systems typeface, a method of communication and labeling that unified parts of the military, and then NASA’s myriad actors: contractors, engineers, and astronauts.
Futura first entered the world as the 1927 creation of German type designer Paul Renner and the Bauer Type Foundry. It quickly became a worldwide sensation, as perhaps the smallest, and most easily consumable, contribution to Bauhaus-inspired Modernism. Futura began as high art, new and dangerous in its design and underlying egalitarian ideology, but it quickly became mainstream in the U.S.A., as workaday advertisers and printers adopted it (or one of its US-manufactured clones) to illuminate everything from Picasso drawings in Vanity Fair to Midwestern farm supply catalogs. Within a decade, America had fully assimilated Futura’s bracingly modern sans serif design, clear geometric shape, and experimental flavor for its own cultural and commercial uses. By the 1950s and ’60s, Futura had established itself as a visual cue for authority. It signaled factual information in headings, footnotes, and fine print across thousands of textbooks, newspapers, encyclopedias, and magazines. Futura’s visual authority sprang from its ubiquity, effectively robbing the typeface of its avant-garde exclusivity.
In this environment, NASA didn’t choose Futura as a grand aesthetic statement of modernism unique to space travel. The U.S. Army had been using Futura as the basis for its detailed global mapping project since World War II, and the US Air Force had started using Futura on labels for its missiles by the late 1950s. By the time of the Apollo program in the 1960s, Futura was a generic choice for military operations.
As with many large-scale operations, NASA operated by contracting out the design and manufacturing of the items it needed, from rocket boosters to waste bags. But because each contractor stamped their products with their own labels, when the products reached NASA they were appropriated into NASA’s own system. For example, the medium-format camera that the Apollo 11 astronauts used to take pictures of the moon was the commercially available Swedish Hasselblad 500EL camera, modified with special lubricants and coatings for use in space. The camera’s lens dials and controls came with their usual machine-routed type. Before sending the camera into space, NASA placed a sticker with simplified instructions on the top of each camera, set in Futura. This ensured that the astronauts could successfully operate the camera, and also lent an official look that the astronauts would quickly, even subconsciously, recognize as the authoritative voice of mission control.
NASA engineers and builders repeated this sticker example hundreds of times until Futura became one of the most visual manifestations of NASA’s complex system. Mission charts and maps set in Futura directed John Glenn as he first orbited the earth. After oxygen tanks exploded on Apollo 13, Jack Swigert watched plunging oxygen levels on indicator dials set in Futura. And after every successful mission, Futura-lettered labels on doors, levers, and knobs guided astronauts as they opened the hatches back on Earth, triumphant in their accomplishments. Black Futura type on silver adhesive labels marked daily food rations, tool bags, and even human-waste containers. Training and operating manuals primarily featured Futura. In each case, the typeface’s presence served as evidence that an object had been vetted and cleared for use in the NASA system — both on the ground at mission control and in the spacecraft. The marking system legitimized each piece and, because of the visual similarity of each label, contributed to ease of use.
Futura became NASA’s main system interface for its thousands of scientists, engineers, and government bureaucrats, but its need was most immediate for the astronauts. Without Futura, the command module would have looked like the tangle of electronics in a modern living room — and been just as confusing. Imagine trying to connect your Sony speakers to your Panasonic television, or casting around for the right remote control, all while hurtling through space. The astronauts had enough to worry about. Where complexity was needed, an entire array of buttons, knobs, and dials were labeled in Futura, allowing astronauts expert control of their craft. Wherever things could be simplified, like camera instructions and food bags, Futura eliminated extraneous information. In both cases, Futura made that object part of a system the astronauts recognized as their own. Everything they needed to know came from NASA, and everything from NASA was written in Futura.
In 1976, NASA adopted a new identity system designed by the firm Danne & Blackburn. The identity is associated with the famous “worm” logo, but its most lasting change was the adoption of Helvetica as the new default typeface. After the change, NASA used Helvetica for its papers and publications — including labels throughout the new space shuttles. NASA’s use of Helvetica wasn’t any more avant-garde than its use of Futura in the previous generation — except as a signal that both typefaces had established themselves as defaults. But where Futura emerged as a bureaucratic vernacular developed over decades, Helvetica was part of a full-fledged corporate identity program. Designers of the identity program mandated Helvetica, and NASA adopted it all at once.
By the late 1960s and throughout the 1970s, hundreds of corporations were choosing Helvetica in exactly the same way, accepting the wisdom of design firms to adopt new identity programs specifying the typeface. With overwhelming corporate adoption of Helvetica, the typeface seems American in spite of its Swiss/German origins. In every year the space shuttle flew, it featured the words United States in Helvetica. And in 2016, unless you were a type nerd, when you saw Matt Damon try to survive a harsh alien planet in The Martian, you probably didn’t even think about the type. Every supply crate and food ration labeled in Helvetica disappeared into the background because it had earned the power to do so, becoming tightly woven into the fabric of modern society.
Now that Futura is no longer America’s default (Helvetica and its clones are), Futura once again feels sexy, sleek, and modern — far more than it did when it was used for the Apollo missions. In today’s context, stripped of some of its generic uses, Futura has reacquired some of its original popularity: a perfect reduction of form and clean geometry that stands out.
The lunar plaque in Futura, and the 1980s space shuttle in Helvetica, inadvertently yet perfectly, parallels the history of American space technology. America owes its space program to German immigrant scientists, meticulously recruited and welcomed as they fled dictatorships and war. Just as the work of German scientists came to represent America’s deepest-held values and futuristic hopes, Futura became the vernacular typeface of American commerce and culture.
By the time of the space missions, Futura’s sheer ubiquity (helped by its numerous American-made copies) meant that the irony of its German roots would have been lost on most public observers, and almost certainly on NASA’s decision-makers. In this way, Futura, Helvetica, and the space program represent one of the best (and sometimes worst) aspects of American culture: its ability to adopt and adapt new ideas into its mainstream. In the moon landing, both the technology and the typeface formed integral parts of giant, interconnecting systems that for decades defined what it is to be American.
This article is adapted from Never Use Futura (Princeton Architectural Press, 2017).
Magenta is a publication of Huge.
