[1][2] It was not commercially released until type designer Rudy VanderLans was exposed to the font, when Deck's California Institute of the Arts graduate class visited his studio.

Template Gothic was one of the first digital typefaces acquired by the Museum of Modern Art for its Architecture and Design Collection in 2011.

Along with twenty-two other fonts, it was displayed in MoMA's Standard Deviations exhibition from March 2011 to January 2012.

Deck chose to eschew the predictability and uniformity of typefaces such as Helvetica and Univers, paying more attention to organic shapes and natural variations in order to create a more imperfect look.

In an interview with Emigre, Deck describes how he received the inspiration for Template Gothic from a sign in his local laundromat, which had been lettered by hand with a template. "