As the camera panned to the sign-waving crowd of politicos at last night’s Democratic National Convention in Denver, I was reminded of an upward trend I’ve noticed in email marketing campaigns over the last year. 

Many organizations have recently made a design statement — from Barack Obama to Banana Republic to Drugstore.com to Saks Fifth Avenue to Kia Motors to Steve Madden — in choosing the popular Gotham font in their email and advertising communications. Designed by Hoefler & Frere-Jones, Gotham has quickly become a top choice for graphic designers needing a clean sans-serif font (i.e. no curly ends on strokes), particularly those in the retail space.

For whatever reason, it has long been the case that competing retail brands tend to use nearly identical fonts and colors in their marketing materials. If you work in cosmetics or beauty products, the odds are very high that your company uses Helvetica Light. Or if you work for a high-end department store, chances are you’ve been featuring a lot of Futura in your campaigns. 

Stay tuned for a survey on the most overused/underused fonts in email marketing…