Typography

While not required in every instance, Whitney is our University’s preferred font.

Whitney bridges the needs of editorial typography and public signage within a single design. Originally created for the Whitney Museum of American Art, its compact forms use space efficiently, and its ample contours and open shapes make it clearly visible under any circumstances.

Key features of Whitney are:

• Economy: Whitney was designed to work in crowded environments, so its shapes are especially space-efficient in text sizes.
• Clarity: Whitney’s forms were shaped with both distance reading and material fabrication in mind.
• Indices: Whether it’s enumerating the steps in a recipe or marking key places on a map, a set of circled numbers comes in handy. The Whitney Index package includes these, pre-made, in 16 different styles.
• Numerics: For tables and charts, each of Whitney’s styles offers a companion “Numeric” range that contains tabular figures and fractions.
• Language: Support OpenType editions of Whitney contain H&FJ’s Latin-X^® character set, covering more than 100 languages throughout the world—including all of Central Europe.

Keep in mind that any typeface you choose needs to work in concert with design and brand, helping depict BU as a modern, confident, and dynamic university.

There are many fonts available, but generally we recommend:

• Clean and classic faces, with a preference for sans-serif fonts
• Other support fonts commonly used include Tiempos (serif), BentonSans, and BentonSans Condensed and Compressed (sans serif)
• Legible font sizing: 9–12 point for print body copy and 12–16 pixels for web body copy
• Use 14–16 pixels for long-form digital copy
• Avoid fonts that are overly stylized
• Limit using Boston University Red for text color in print. However, BU Red maybe used for hyperlinks on web
• Avoid using type with drop shadows
• Avoid outlining type
• Avoid excessive condensing, tracking, horizontal scaling

Whitney is available only to Boston University employees who are directly involved in the creation of marketing and communication materials. If you’re non-marketing staff or an external consultant, you may purchase the Whitney font directly from Hoefler & Co’s website.

Request Font