Balboa
A display gothic blending elements of historic types.
Designed by Jim Parkinson
Story
Balboa is a display gothic typeface steeped in rich typographic history. Elements of early sans serif and grotesque types were skillfully combined with contemporary typefaces by legendary designer Jim Parkinson to create a unique and familiar face. The style evolved from ATF Headline Gothic, Banner — a headline face Parkinson drew for the San Francisco Chronicle, and Newsweek No. 9, a Stevenson-Blake inspired grotesque he drew for Roger Black’s 1980s redesign of Newsweek Magazine.
Visual evidence of Balboa’s blended styles is found in the juxtaposition of the wedge shape from a sign painter’s brush featured in the terminals of curvilinear strokes with the ink traps employed at angled joins. The narrow proportions and ranging midline of the uppercase letters favor display work but the wider styles also dutifully perform well used for subheads.
This expansion update (v2.2) to Balboa levels up this remarkable typeface to meet the requirements of contemporary design. Every font in the family now has a repertoire of 879 glyphs supporting 224 languages, including Vietnamese and Latin-based African languages. Two new weights: Regular and SemiBold were added, as were a selection of characters for increased compatibility, plus some great Opentype features for today’s typography savvy designers.
Features
Additional features include: Subscript, Superscript, Numerators, Denominators, and Lining Figures.
Glyphs
Basic Latin 95
Latin-1 Supplement 96
Latin Extended-A 124
Latin Extended-B 102
IPA Extensions 12
Spacing Modifier Letters 14
Combining Diacritical Marks 32
Greek and Coptic 4
Latin Extended Additional 163
General Punctuation 35
Currency Symbols 12
Letterlike Symbols 6
Mathematical Operators 13
Geometric Shapes 2
Alphabetic Presentation Forms 2
Latin Extended-C 1
Latin Extended-D 3
Additional Glyphs 32
Balboa supports 224 languages. View our language support page to see which.