What Makes the National Geographic Font Outstanding
National Geographic, formerly known as National Geographic Channel and commonly abbreviated as Nat Geo or Nat Geo TV, is an American pay TV network that airs non-fiction shows, particularly that of nature, science, history, and culture. The channel also airs some reality and pseudo-scientific shows.
National Geographic is under the joint ownership of The Walt Disney Company and the National Geographic Society. Launched on January 7, 2001, the channel is currently available to over 86 million pay television households.
National Geographic Font
The National Geographic logo is designed in a font known as Geograph.
It’s a contemporary, geometric sans-serif typeface designed exclusively for the National Geographic television network. The font was created by Kris Sowersby and Noe Blanco. It was first released in spring 2018 and is published by New Zealand-based Klim Font Foundry.
Geograph isn’t the font National Geographic has used on its logo since the network’s inception. The typeface was created barely three years ago; whereas the National Geographic channel has been around for more than two decades.
Geograph was developed as a replacement for Verlag and Neue Haas Grotesk. Its creation was part of National Geographic’s most recent campaigns to revamp its visual identity.
Geograph was originally available only in one style (Geograph Regular). However, continued upgrades and modifications have yielded 11 additional styles. It’s also split into two broad sub-families, namely Geograph and Geograph Edit. Each sub-family has 12 styles, which brings the total number of styles in the broader Geograph family to 24.
For each style, you get UPPERCASE letters (including regular uppercase and uppercase alternatives), lowercase letters (including regular lowercase and lowercase alternatives), UPPERCASE accents and accent alternatives, and lowercase accents and accent alternatives.
You also get numerals, numeral alternatives, tabular lining numerals, tabular lining numeral alternatives, punctuation marks, fractions, currency symbols, and many more character ranges.
Geograph and Geograph Edit both come with Futura-like alternates (‘aegjstuGS’). You also get to experiment with an optional crossed ‘W’.
Besides, Geograph and Geograph Edit are both generally plain and rather simplistic, but with a rich and dense texture. Their plainness allows you to use them on multiple design surfaces.
However, given that Geograph is heavily influenced by Futura (which is famed for its spirituality), this font would be best suited for creating ubiquitous designs. Examples of such designs include company logos, road & store signage, and billboard advertisements.
Where to Download the Geograph Font
Geograph’s association with one of the world’s most popular television channels means the font is fairly available on multiple platforms.
You can access Geograph on Fonts In Use or Gooova Fonts. If you’d prefer Geograph Edit, you can check the CuFon Fonts or CDN Fonts websites.
Note that Geograph is a proprietary typeface. That means you can’t use it, at least not before obtaining a special license from the designer or publisher.