Brothers
— Designed by John Downer

Brothers has always been one of my favorite typefaces. To a certain genre of designer, this typeface is iconic and instantly recognizable. Despite its chamfered edges and pointed Latin serifs, it is a warm design that feels lovingly crafted.

It is easy to see why designers are drawn to the typeface; it’s oozing with personality and has a startling amount of variations and alternates available. I’ve certainly been guilty of taking it for granted and not taking the time to appreciate what a masterful job John Downer has done. Any given weight of Brothers would be a fine display face on its own, but the fact that it has 3 different weights (Regular, Bold and SuperSlant, the italic), that each weight has an alternate set, and that there’s also a set of stunning Word Logos to use makes this font a playground for typographers.

Brothers straddles the line of lettering and type design, and I’m not sure anyone other than the supremely talented John Downer would have the skill-set to make something like this. Despite having an eye-catching aesthetic and a dominating personality, Brothers works remarkably well as a supporting typeface. The risk in using a typeface this distinctive is that it can become the only thing you notice in the design, and I think the most successful designs either wholeheartedly embrace the font and let it drive the design, or use it subtly and let it add color and contrast to more restrained typefaces

While the Cole Brother’s letterhead is from the 1920’s, you can find even earlier examples of similar typeface designs in both lettering instructionals and wood type specimens. There’s a less-bold lettering style shown in Elements of lettering and sign painting from 1899 that shares the flared terminals, subtle Latin serifs and raised middle arm on the “E” with Brothers^[5].

Another example from the era that shares some characteristics is wood type manufacturer Page’s 1887 design, № 514^[4]. It has the petite Latin serifs, but instead of sharp edges uses curves to draw its outer edges. This design was produced by die-cutting the design into the face of the wood block to trim around the raised designs while the negative space was cleared away, a process that allowed for more intricate typeface designs. There are details in Brothers, like the wilting middle arm on one of the alternate “F’s” (see the specimen at the top of the review, right column, second row) that could have been inspired by the odd drooping ball appendage on the “F” in this design. One of the reasons I am referencing this specific design is to show the wisdom in leaning on straight lines. You can see how clean and crisp Brothers is as a result, compared to the № 514 design, which feels less consistent, much more busy and is harder to read.

Another example I’ve found is this Ocean’s Blend tea tin^[7]. It’s a lovely piece of vintage design, with bright colors and a delightful mix of lettering styles. The “TEA” text underneath the engraving of a ship shares a lot of similarities with Brothers. The shape of the “T” is nearly identical (though the Ocean’s Blend lettering has a thicker stem) and the “E” has the same backwards-sloping terminal on the middle arm as the Brothers Bold alternate. The tin’s “A” has an uneven stress, and seeing this example made me appreciate the even weight that Brothers has, which simplifies the letterform construction and better presents the pointed serifs and chamfered edges. If there was more thick-to-thin in Brothers, it could easily become overwrought and difficult to read.

Brothers strengths

Brothers is best suited for clean presentations where it can retain its crisp forms. I love the way Francesco Paternoster uses Brothers in The surnames of Matera poster^[1], where he uses stark colors and Brothers’ strong presence to visualize the number of residents in Matera (South Italy) have the same surname. He makes brilliant use of the alternate’s superscript numerals and has the confidence to let Brothers do its job. It’s a refreshing use of the font and a contrast to the way many designers try to use it. Brothers is a robust font that can handle a lot of texture and distressing, but please, please consider just letting Brother’s crisp lines show through once in awhile.

The other major crime designers inflict upon this typeface is mixing it with other distinctive display faces in an effect to bedazzle their boring designs and compensate for their lack of a design point of view. Brothers can be successfully used against other unique typefaces, but it has to be done thoughtfully and systematically.

One such example is the lovely Great Gatsby-inspired letterpressed poster Heads of State designed in 2012^[9]. The poster is comprised of a grid of business card designs with references from the novel. Brothers is featured in the bottom right card, set with a gentle wave in its baseline (for such an angular font, Brothers handles such distortions well). It doesn’t compete with the more than a dozen other fonts in the design because each “cell” of the grid is asked to stand on its own, and the cards a whole are unified by shared colors and healthy use of negative space.

Two beers, two different uses of Brothers. For Smith & Forge^[13] Brothers is used for all of the typography, set large in stark colors, and the copy is really hitting those masculine terms (SMITH! FORGE! HARD! STRONG!). The bold, sharply incised characters in Brothers hit you over the head with the messaging, and the design on the whole is simple, striking, and direct. The Ballast Point can designs feature a lot of Brothers as well^[12], but the tone is notably softer. The harsh angles of the font are contrasted with a round badge shape (which is in turn softened even further by the undulating rope border). The design is more formal and classical in its presentation and uses color and composition to clearly segment the design. Both beers use Brothers effectively, but in two very different ways, and it speaks well of the typeface that it is versatile enough to handle both applications.

Brothers was one of the foundational typefaces of the Eephus League, my senior thesis turned small business. Brothers has found its way into quite a few baseball-related materials over the years (see the gorgeous cover of The Chicago Cubs: Story of a Curse^[15] for a pitch-perfect example), so I’ve always wanted to be sure my usage of it was purposeful and it wasn’t just a crutch. Thankfully, many pieces of baseball ephemera make use of multiple typefaces and that meant I could use Brothers without relying on it to drive the typographic voice of the work. As I’ve expanded the typographic language of the brand Brothers has stuck around, and I usually save it for “hero” moments. It’s the font for the backwards “K” and “HR” diamonds revealed through the die cut cover of my original scorebook design^[14] and it’s used to display prices of items on the Eephus League website. I find the designs I’ve made that don’t use it feel significantly colder, even when I’m replacing Brothers with another chamfered typeface (check out this foil-embossed poster for a good example of the difference in tone without Brothers).

Quirks and eccentricities

As is to be expected with a blocky, spikey typeface like this, special care has to be paid to the kerning. “L’s” can bump into neighbors and I’ve found I need to move things a bit closer to the right side of the “O” fairly often. The SuperSlant weight is the most tempermental of all of them, so be extra sure to give those strings a once over before you wrap a design. Note that only the Regular and SuperSlant weights and their alternates have lowercase sets.

The alternates add a great deal of character to the typeface—adding dipped crossbars, tails that roll up instead of coming down straight, and give the “W” a pair of stilts^[20]. However, the added details come at a cost to legibility, and I find the alternative set is more difficult to use successfully at smaller sizes. When reading from a laptop, at size 30pt and lower these details can start to feel distracting and throw off the legibility of the typeface. Save them for larger uses of Brothers, and be sure to play around with mixing and matching the standard characters with the alternates! I actually think the standard set of apostrophes better matches the design of the alternates. Mixing and matching the standards and alternate sets is one of the joys and challenges in using Brothers.

As previously mentioned, Designers are often tempted to add more flair to Brothers despite its ornate design. I’m not exactly sure what it is about Brothers that so tempts us to mangle it, but apparently its bold lines and flared serifs aren’t enough for us. I’ve shown some examples in this review that add ornamentation to Brothers in a way I think is successful, but there are dozens I could have shown that are less so. Perhaps its because the typeface is so distinctive that designers feel they need to differentiate their usage if it from the thousands of uses that have come before. Regardless of why its done, I’m making the plea to the designers out there to trust that Brothers is quite ornate and “vintage” on its own and it doesn’t need your help getting there. Don’t get sucked into thinking the prominence of this typeface in certain circles of design means you can’t use it unless you make it different. There’s no shame in using a great font as-is.