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Burlingame Condensed Black, designed by Carl Crossgrove, released by Monotype.

Burlingame is a multi-purpose font family that started out as a single typeface with a more specialist purpose. There’s a clue in the name: it was originally intended for a game identity. It has found a wider purpose following pioneering investigations by Monotype into the legibility of vehicle displays. The research revealed a set of optimum criteria for dashboard display fonts: large counters and x-heights, simple shapes and a loose spacing of characters.

A search of Monotype’s own library turned up nothing that fitted the bill exactly, so Carl Crossgrove was asked to develop his game font, Burlingame, with its open, clear shapes, into a family of faces that could meet the high-performance demands. His refinements, increasing the x-height, loosening the spacing and paring down the corners, improved the clarity and led to a design in two widths and nine fine weight grades, suited to a wide range of uses, from packaging and publishing to game and motion graphics.