A bold look at Freshman

In my job as the Media Relations Assistant here at Dixie State College, one task I am asked to do is update media notes for our games. The document template used in the department adopted a font this year that closely resembled the block lettering of the official Dixie State Athletics logo. That font is Freshman.

The font is unique in the fact that it has uniquely modern features, sprinkled with one old tinge. Freshman font is a capital letter font, meaning that letters meant to be lowercase in fonts like Ariel or Times New Roman would remain capitalized in the Freshman font. Readers can tell the difference because letters deemed lowercase are shorter in height than the true uppercase.

Another modern aspect is the consistency of bold lines that make up the lettering. Unlike an old style or transitional font, Freshman has thick lines. The best example in this case is the letter Q. You can barely see the descending bar distinguishing the Q from an O because of its thickness. There is no delineation in line thickness in the Freshman font.

As modern as the font may look, it does present an older look with the use of serifs. Thick bars on both the top and bottom of the letter X highlight the serifs.

It is my opinion that the font was created for bold headings and those who cannot see words clearly. Its striking nature makes it a favorable font for advertisers. The National Football League has used the font in ads in past.

For use in the Dixie State media notes, we indent the font in section headings. This makes the font look asymmetrical despite its rigid regular symmetry. Below is a picture of the front page of our men’s basketball notes. Freshman font examples are the words “Men’s Basketball” at the top of the page, each section header in white lettering bordered by red, and the footer (found on every page of the notes).