Basic Commercial™ font family


Designed by  Linotype Design Studio in 1999
Basic Commercial is a font based on historical designs from the hot metal typeface era. It first appeared around 1900, and was created by type designers whose names have not been recorded but whose skills cannot be overlooked. This typeface's design has been popular among groups and movements as diverse as the Bauhaus, Dadaism, and the masters of Swiss/International-Style typography. It influenced for a variety of later grotesque fonts, such as Helvetica and Univers.

Basic Commercial was distributed for many years in the United States under the name Standard Series. The typeface worked its way into many aspects of daily life and culture; for instance, it became the face chosen for use in the New York City subway system's signage.

The Basic Commercial's font family members have a clear and objective design. Their forms exhibit almost nothing unusual, but remain both lively and legible nonetheless. Perhaps for this reason, Basic Commercial's design has been popular with graphic designers for decades. To read more about the history of typefaces like Basic Commercial, visit our font feature, The Sans Serif Typefaces. In addition several weights of this typefamily are available as soft rounded versions."

Basic Commercial Roman

Desktop fonts are designed to be installed on a computer for use with applications. Licensed per user.
Annual web fonts are licensed for a set number of page views.
Annual web fonts are licensed for a set number of page views.
Application licensing allows fonts to be embedded in your software applications. The license may be based on the number of titles or the number of installations.
Electronic Document Fonts can be embedded in an eBook, eMagazine or eNewspaper. Fonts are licensed annually per issue.
Server fonts can be installed on a server and e.g. used by automated processes to create items. A license is per server core CPU per year.
A Digital Ads license allows you to embed web fonts in digital ads, such as ads created in HTML5. These license is based on the number of ad impressions.
Basic Commercial


Select technical format and
language support of the font.
world-map map

Pro / OT CFF

supports at least

33 languages.















Technical details
Digital data from:
OpenType outline flavour:
CFF - PostScript-Outlines
Technical font names:
File name: BasicCommercialLTPro-Roman.otf
Windows menu name: BasicCommercial LT Pro
PostScript name: , BasicCommercialLTPro-Roman
PostScript full name: , Basic Commercial LT Pro Roman
Catalog number:
16741821
Characters:
388
US$ 55.99
Add to cart

Features

Languages

Case-Sensitive Forms

Tag: case

Function: Shifts various punctuation marks up to a position that works better with all-capital sequences or sets of lining figures; also changes oldstyle figures to lining figures. By default, glyphs in a text face are designed to work with lowercase characters. Some characters should be shifted vertically to fit the higher visual center of all-capital or lining text. Also, lining figures are the same height (or close to it) as capitals, and fit much better with all-capital text. The user selects a block of text and applies this feature. The dashes, bracketing characters, guillemet quotes and the like shift up to match the capitals, and oldstyle figures change to lining figures.

Fractions

Tag: frac

Function: Replaces figures separated by a slash with 'common' (diagonal) fractions. The user enters 3/4 in a recipe and gets the threequarters fraction.

Standard Ligatures

Tag: liga

Function: Replaces a sequence of glyphs with a single glyph which is preferred for typographic purposes. This feature covers the ligatures which the designer/manufacturer judges should be used in normal conditions. The glyph for ffl replaces the sequence of glyphs f f l.

Localized Forms

Tag: locl

Function: Many scripts used to write multiple languages over wide geographical areas have developed localized variant forms of specific letters, which are used by individual literary communities. For example, a number of letters in the Bulgarian and Serbian alphabets have forms distinct from their Russian counterparts and from each other. In some cases the localized form differs only subtly from the script 'norm', in others the forms are radically distinct. This feature enables localized forms of glyphs to be substituted for default forms. The user applies this feature to text to enable localized Bulgarian forms of Cyrillic letters; alternatively, the feature might enable localized Russian forms in a Bulgarian manufactured font in which the Bulgarian forms are the default characters.

Ordinals

Tag: ordn

Function: Replaces default alphabetic glyphs with the corresponding ordinal forms for use after figures. One exception to the follows-a-figure rule is the numero character (U+2116), which is actually a ligature substitution, but is best accessed through this feature. The user applies this feature to turn 2.o into 2.o (abbreviation for secundo).

Superscript

Tag: sups

Function: Replaces lining or oldstyle figures with superior figures (primarily for footnote indication), and replaces lowercase letters with superior letters (primarily for abbreviated French titles). The application can use this feature to automatically access the superior figures (more legible than scaled figures) for footnotes, or the user can apply it to Mssr to get the classic form.

-

Tag: dpng

Ornaments

Tag: ornm

Function: This is a dual-function feature, which uses two input methods to give the user access to ornament glyphs (e.g. fleurons, dingbats and border elements) in the font. One method replaces the bullet character with a selection from the full set of available ornaments; the other replaces specific "lower ASCII" characters with ornaments assigned to them. The first approach supports the general or browsing user; the second supports the power user. The user inputs qwwwwwwwwwe to form the top of a flourished box in Adobe Caslon, or inputs the bullet character, then chooses the thistle dingbat.

Discretionary Ligatures

Tag: dlig

Function: Replaces a sequence of glyphs with a single glyph which is preferred for typographic purposes. This feature covers those ligatures which may be used for special effect, at the user's preference. The glyph for ct replaces the sequence of glyphs c t, or U+322E (Kanji ligature for "Friday") replaces the sequence U+91D1 U+66DC U+65E5.

These fonts support the Basic Latin character set. Each font is Unicode™ encoded, and available in d

Tag: Basic Latin

Function: These fonts support the Basic Latin character set. Each font is Unicode™ encoded, and available in different formats. Please review the product information for each font to ensure it will meet your requirements.

These fonts support the Latin Extended character set. Each font is Unicode™ encoded, and available i

Tag: Latin Extended

Function: These fonts support the Latin Extended character set. Each font is Unicode™ encoded, and available in different formats. Please review the product information for each font to ensure it will meet your requirements.