Gotham

A sans serif font, also called a sans or gothic font, is a typeface which lacks serifs, the small ornaments at the bottoms and tops of letters. The font used for this article is a sans serif font, and you may note that it looks relatively plain and unadorned, and also that it renders crisply and clearly on the computer screen. Many serif fonts dither when translated to the screen, and as a result web designers prefer to use sans serif fonts for readability. The first half of the name “sans serif” is derived from the French sans, which means “without.”
A serif font has letters with varying line width and ornamental features which make each letter highly distinctive. Serif fonts derive from calligraphy and handwritten pieces, and retain many of the characteristics which make calligraphy distinctive. In the early 19th century, designers of typefaces began to toy with the idea of removing serifs from their fonts, but the idea did not attain popularity until the 1920s and 1930s, when sans serif fonts exploded in advertising and newspaper headlines. Both sans serif and serif fonts are widely used around the world today, depending on personal preference and application.
A sans serif font tends to look highly modern, as modern advertising design was the first field in which sans serif fonts were widely used. There are actually a number of families of sans serif fonts, starting with grotesque and neo-grotesque, early sans serif fonts similar to Arial which tend to look very plain and unornamented. The name comes from popular slang among typographers, which called sans serif fonts “grotesque.” Next come humanist fonts, which have more variation in line width and personality. Modernist design also incorporates a lot of geometric sans serif fonts, which rely on angular geometric shapes for their letters.
Some classic examples of sans serif fonts include Helvetica, Verdana, and Futura. The dramatic appearance differences between these fonts shows how sans serif fonts have diverged, just as serif fonts have. Some popular applications for sans serif fonts include advertising design, headlines, and the Internet, as a sans font is darker and more distinct, making it easy to see and recognize. Serif fonts are still heavily used in books, magazines, and newspapers because they are somewhat easier to read. The serifs help to draw the eye and hold focus on a line of text, while reading large blocks of sans serif text can be difficult.

In typography, a sans-serif or sans serif typeface is one that does not have the small features called "serifs" at the end of strokes. The term comes from the Latin word "sine", via the French word sans, meaning "without".
In print, sans-serif fonts are more typically used for headlines than for body text. The conventional wisdom holds that serifs help guide the eye along the lines in large blocks of text. Sans-serifs, however, have acquired considerable acceptance for body text in Europe.
Sans-serif fonts have become the de facto standard for body text on-screen, especially online. This is partly because interlaced displays may show twittering on the fine details of the horizontal serifs. Additionally, the low resolution of digital displays in general can make fine details like serifs disappear or appear too large.
Before the term “sans-serif” became standard in English typography, a number of other terms had been used. One of these outmoded terms for sans serif was gothic, which is still used in East Asian typography and sometimes seen in font names like Century Gothic.
Sans-serif fonts are sometimes, especially in older documents, used as a device for emphasis, due to their typically blacker type color.


GOTHAM
Here's what Jonathan Hoefler and Tobias Frere-Jones, the designers of Gotham have to say;
"A journalist recently asked what it is about Gotham that we think suits the Obama campaign. We'll defer to designers John Slabyk and Scott Thomas to make that call — they selected the font for Obama for America, we merely provided it — but one thing we can say as type designers is that Gotham isn't pretending to be anything it's not, which makes it an unusual and refreshing choice for a campaign. Political typefaces have a way of being chosen because they underscore (or imagine) some specific aspect of a candidate, working hard to convey "traditional values" or "strength and vigilance," or any number of graspable populist notions. The only thing Gotham works hard at is being Gotham."
During the first months of their collaboration, Hoefler and Frere-Jones discovered their mutual affection for this disappearing species of lettering. In 2000, a commission to design a signature sans serif for GQ afforded them the chance to explore the style, for which Frere-Jones undertook a massive study of building lettering in New York, starting with a charming but rarely examined sign for the Port Authority Bus Terminal. Though Frere-Jones wanted his drawings to exhibit the "mathematical reasoning of a draftsman" rather than the instincts of a type designer, he allowed Gotham to escape the grid wherever necessary, giving the design an affability usually missing from 'geometric' faces. Unlike the signage upon which it was based, Gotham includes a lowercase, an italic, a full range of weights, and an extended range of widths: a Narrow, an Extra Narrow, and a Condensed.

THE CREATORS
Tobias Frere-Jones
After receiving his BFA in 1992 from Rhode Island School of Design, Frere-Jones joined Font Bureau, Inc. in Boston. Over seven years as a Senior Designer, he created a number of the typefaces that are Font Bureau's best known, among them Interstate and Poynter Oldstyle & Gothic. He joined the Yale School of Art faculty in 1996 as a Critic. In 1999, he left Font Bureau to return to New York, where he began work with Jonathan Hoefler at The Hoefler Type Foundry, Inc. Since working together, the two have collaborated on projects for The Wall Street Journal, Martha Stewart Living, Nike, Pentagram, GQ, Esquire, The New Times, Business 2.0, and The New York Times Magazine.
He has designed over two hundred typefaces for retail publication, custom clients, and experimental purposes. His clients have included The Boston Globe, The New York Times, The Cooper-Hewitt Museum, The Whitney Museum, The American Institute of Graphic Arts Journal, and Neville Brody. He has lectured at Rhode Island School of Design, Yale School of Art, Pratt Institute, Royal College of Art, and Universidad de las Americas. His work has been featured in How, ID, Page, and Print, and is included in the permanent collection of the Victoria & Albert Museum, London. Hoefler and Frere-Jones' collaboration earned the two a profile in Time Magazine.
Here's a list of some of the fonts he's designed:
Armada, 1987–94
Dolores, 1990
Hightower, 1990–94
Nobel, 1991–93
Garage Gothic, 1992
Archipelago, 1992–98
Cafeteria, 1993
Epitaph, 1993
Reactor, 1993–96
Reiner Script, 1993
Stereo, 1993
Interstate, 1993–99
Fibonacci, 1994
Niagara, 1994
Asphalt, 1995
MSL Gothic (Benton Sans), 1995
Citadel, 1995
Microphone, 1995
Pilsner, 1995
Poynter Oldstyle, 1996–97
Poynter Gothic, 1997
Griffith Gothic, 1997
Whitney, 1996-2004
Numbers (with Jonathan Hoefler), 1997–2006
Phemister, 1997
Grand Central, 1998
Welo Script, 1998
Mercury Text (with Jonathan Hoefler and Jesse Ragan), 1999
Vitesse (with Jonathan Hoefler), 2000
Lever Sans (with Jonathan Hoefler), 2000
Evolution (with Jonathan Hoefler), 2000
Retina, 2000
Nitro, 2001
Surveyor, 2001
Archer (with Jonathan Hoefler and Jesse Ragan), 2001
Gotham (with Jesse Ragan), 2001
Idlewild, 2002
Exchange, 2002
Monarch, 2003
Dulcet, 2003
Tungsten, 2004
Argosy, 2004
Gotham Rounded, 2005

Jesse Ragan
Orignally from North Carolina, he learned to create typefaces while at Rhode Island School of Design. He studied both modern digital techniques and the fundamentals of punchcutting. One craft is relatively young; one endured for four centuries after the invention of movable metal type. This experience cultivated his belief that artisanship should transcend technology. After college, he designed typefaces at Hoefler & Frere-Jones, where he had a hand in Gotham, Archer and many other familes. Since 2005, he has worked independently in Brooklyn, developing typefaces and lettering for a variety of clients. His work can be found in the retail libraries of Font Bureau, House Industries and Darden Studio. He also teaches typeface design at Cooper Union and Pratt Institute.
Archer with Tobias Frere-Jones and Jonathan Hoefler, 2001
Gotham with Tobias Frere-Jones, 2000
Mercury with Jonathan Hoefler, 1997
Smirnoff for Hoefler & Frere-Jones, 2003



http://www.spd.org/2008/08/optima-vs-gotham-campaign-type.php
http://atlanticcommunity.blogspot.com/2008/03/politics-of-gotham.html
http://typography.com/fonts/font_overview.php?productLineID=100008
http://www.servinghistory.com/topics/geometric_sans-serif
http://www.wisegeek.com/what-is-a-sans-serif-font.htm