Sara Soskolne on Stewarding Gotham, Crafting Gotham Variable, and Human Creativity in the Age of AI

Sara Soskolne, the Executive Creative Director at Monotype, has dedicated nearly twenty years to the Gotham typeface, including her tenure as a senior designer at Hoefler&Co, where she worked alongside its original creators, Tobias Frere-Jones and Jonathan Hoefler. She recently spearheaded the creation of Gotham Variable, which broadens the font's variations. This year commemorates the 25th anniversary of Gotham's debut in print, first seen on the cover and within GQ magazine in 2001. For the Obama Foundation's brand update, Soskolne partnered with Manual Creative to design unique Gotham styles for the Obama Presidential Center and Foundation, introducing Gotham Condensed Bold to resonate with younger audiences. Three new styles—Slab Serif, Inline, and Stencil—were designed to reflect various programming themes: civics and politics, sports and activity, and environment and sustainability. Describing typeface design as 'micro-nerdery,' she views herself as a craftsperson and expresses concern over AI's influence on entry-level design roles, emphasizing her interest in human creativity. She references Canadian artist Robin Collyer's 1990s photographs, devoid of text, to illustrate how typography influences perception.