At different times, different type foundries have marketed the same font under those names. By the way, if you think Futura looks like typefaces named Intertype and Spartan, you're right. The appealing spikiness of both fonts, however, makes for clean-looking headlines and text as easy to read as any sans serif face can be.

As a result of this and its wider base, Futura has become the better known and more popular of the two families. Although it started life with some very eccentric letters, particularly 'a' and 'g', the lower-case alphabet of Futura is now a shade less eccentric and more polished.

Kabel was designed by Rudolph Koch for Klingspor, while Futura was designed by Paul Renner for Bauer. Kabel and Futura are birds of a feather, and both fonts seem to have been fledged between 19.