MVB Solano Gothic Bold was originally designed as a display face for the City of Albany, California (located on the San Francisco Bay facing the Golden Gate Bridge and bordering Berkeley). Named for the City’s main street, the typeface needed to work on signage in proximity to early 20th Century buildings, and in contemporary settings. Rather than creating a neutered design to cover all bases, Mark van Bronkhorst chose to develop a simple, strong, condensed face that would offer flexibility of style by providing both retro and more contemporary forms.

Solano Gothic has since been expanded to a family offering five weights from Light to Bold.

The basic fonts provide upper- and lowercase forms, with figures designed to harmonize within upper- and lowercase settings (the standard figures are not full cap height). The same figures are provided with Small Caps, and align to small cap height. For all-cap settings requiring figures and monetary symbols of full-cap height, there are the “Cap” fonts. An alternate tabular “1” is provided in all fonts so that both fitted and tabular settings of figures are possible (access to alternate characters subject to system or application support).