Tu Pa Tu Tu Pa Records is an independent record label and shop in Barcelona, specialized in Hardcore, Crust, Grindcore, Power Violence, Death Metal etc.

The typeface is Blaktur, used in all caps, sometimes with a spray effect. Fittingly, Blaktur was explicitly advertised to be used for things like a “Udo Dirkschneider heavy metal tribute album”. The limited edition CD (“Die neue Amerikanische Badneß”) with the font software comes “with four original tracks by the ‘badneck’ House Industries band.”

The Ultimate Beer Run is a short (2.4 mile) fun run featuring costumes, craft beer samples from Ohio breweries, and live music. The branding for the event parodies the over-the-top machismo of more “serious” runs.

Robert Priest and Grace Lee play off the ecclesiastical nature of their names for their Priest + Grace studio logo. One wise modification was made to Fette Fraktur’s ‘G’, giving it a beard so it would be more easily recognized by an audience unaccustomed to the ornamental Blackletter style.

Mockup of the front page.

For the redesign of Bündner Tagblatt, twotype design created a modern and fresh layout using one typeface family only: the whole newspaper is set in Franziska by Jakob Runge. Read more about this Use and the newly released typeface on the Blog.

The first edition in the new look was published end of August 2013.

Jakob Runge did not only provide the typeface, he also drew the newspaper’s nameplate. Both the historic coat of arms and the blackletter lettering existed as archive images only and hence had to be reinterpreted, vectorized and brought to a contemporary appearance. To cater perfectly to various applications, three distinct versions with different levels of complexity — optical sizes — were created. See more images on his website.

Most blackletter signs and inscriptions in the streets of St. Gallen are not derived from typefaces, but are custom lettering work. “Gallery The Ostrich” is one of the few exceptions — it uses Alte Schwabacher. This is one the most popular digital blackletter fonts, along with Fette Fraktur, Fette Gotisch, Wilhelm Klingspor Gotisch, Old English and Engravers’ Old English.

Typographic knee-jerk reactions, 2/2: Gothic type for a gothic story.

The posters — at least the German ones — for Jim Jarmusch’s romance drama vampire film Only Lovers Left Alive use FF Brokenscript. I approve of this. It’s a stereotype, but a fine one. The contemporary blackletter in pale pink does a great job here.

Via @BaldCondensed — check out his excellent ScreenFonts series where he reviews movie poster typography.

See also this other — not so nice — stereotypical use of FF Brokenscript.

Typographic knee-jerk reactions, 1/2: Using blackletter to evoke Third Reich connotations.

The top story in the current issue of konkret is about the “German hysteric reaction” to the NSA spying affair. The teaser “Achtung! Feind hört mit!” (“Attention! The enemy is listening!”) is set in FF Brokenscript (1991). Of course, Just van Rossum’s contemporary exploration of Fraktur letterforms has nothing to do with the Second World War propaganda nor the German schaftstiefelgrotesks of the mid 1930s. It is a “slightly ironic view of blackletter” (Jan Middendorp in Dutch Type) and “feels very contemporary and cool, rather than medieval and morbid” (FontFont). Reverting to a random blackletter for any allusion to Nazism is historically illiterate. It’s a lame cliché that should be avoided.

See also this other — nicer — stereotypical use of FF Brokenscript.

You’ve surely heard by now: Batkid saved the day (and took over the internet). On Friday, November 15, five-year-old Miles Scott had his wish granted after a long battle with leukemia. The Make-A-Wish foundation and thousands of volunteers in San Francisco gathered to watch Miles save the city from Penguin and the Riddler.

Jerry Quiles, who works for the San Francisco Chronicle in their Marin Circulation center, passes out copies of the Gotham City Chronicle in Union Square. Photo by Jason Henry.

To honor the event, the San Francisco Chronicle published a special front page. This was a clever and generous act — it added to the day’s authenticity as it was handed out to the crowd by a newspaper employee. Due to high demand, the page was reprinted for the Saturday edition.

As far as the typography, this design deviates from the paper’s usual look in a notable way. The Chronicle doesn’t rely on its bold sans-serif, Antenna, to deliver major headlines. Rather it’s fairly restrained, using Farnham for all of the headlines and light treatments of Archer for slugs and bylines (shown below and in this Fonts in Use entry). Major news is still delivered boldly, tucked under the nameplate, but it’s the serif’s duty.

Three alternate front pages, showing the use of Farnham for headlines.

Otherwise, the Gotham City Chronicle looks a lot like a regular edition. The overall structure and edtiorial contributions makes this much more than a bonus page. What could have been a poster — one big color image with a headline — is in effect fairly nuanced and it feels like serious piece of print.

The nameplate of the San Francisco Chronicle is shown with the modified version for Gotham City Chronicle.

Unfortunately, some evil still lurks in the Gotham. Jim Parkinson, a superhero among lettering artists, designed the San Francisco Chronicle nameplate. But the Gotham City nameplate appears to have been chopped up on the fly. Says Parkinson:

No, I didn’t modify it. Although it would have been the kind of thing I do for free.

I think they tried to use a lowercase ‘h’ to make a bizarre ‘G’ and stole the tail from the cap ‘F’ to add to a ‘y’, that was probably once an ‘h’.

Alas. Young heros save cities — thanks, Miles! — but the fight against improper lettering is far from over.

Nina posted this on Twitter before: The new owner of Basel-based confectionery Läckerli-Huus apparently found the fraktur ‘H’ unacceptable. It got replaced with a dumb and unskilled hybrid form in the new logo. The ‘s’ lost its fine top swash, and the ‘l’ was messed with, too. Also, the (double) hyphen had to go.

This is not the first time that blackletter peculiarities were sacrificed: In the 1990s, the logo still proudly featured a ‘ck’ ligature. When the ligature was dissolved, the new ‘k’ kept its very tiny and high loop — and got an enormous leg (see images below).

All logo versions are related to the model of Fette Fraktur. The newest one is derived directly from a digitally available font. By the way, Linotype’s Fette Fraktur has the “romanized” ‘k’ as included in the Läckerli Huus logo, while URW++ and E+F offer the font with the original fraktur ‘k’.

Note how the letterforms have been simplified for the three-dimensional illuminated version.

Hanging sign of Conditorei Praliné Scherrer, a confectionery in St. Gallen, Switzerland. The business was started in 1875 when Ludovico Ferrari, a chocolatier from Ticino, came to St. Gallen with a chocolate recipe from Turin. In 1939, Georg Scherrer took over. Since 2008, the business is led by Vittoria Kreis and her daughter Romina Hengartner.

Posted as an addendum to my blog article about the Volksbühne poster campaign.

In the blog post, I wrote “Volksbühne is blackletter. Blackletter is Volksbühne.” It should become clear what I meant by that when you take a look at the countless flyers for the events of the current season. LSD Design uses more than a dozen different blackletter typefaces, from all subcategories. They are claiming the whole genre for the Volksbühne identity – and it works, because hardly anyone else dares to use these typefaces.

There is textura, fraktur, and one bastarda (Zeitungs-Schwabacher). Some are well-known, like Wilhelm Klingspor Gotisch, others relatively obscure, like Münchner Gotisch. Linotype Textur is not the only contemporary design: there is also Agincourt (David Quay, 1983) and Avebury (Jim Parkinson, 2005). One could think that each flyer got its own typeface, but that’s not true. Some appear twice, like Haenel Fraktur, some even three times, like Deutsche Reichsschrift.

There are three exponents of the controversial simplified gotisch or “schaftstiefelgrotesk”: Nürnberg (Ludwig Wagner, 1934), Tannenberg (D. Stempel AG, 1933–35) and National (Ludwig & Mayer, 1933–38). Unlike on the posters, Potsdam does not make an appearance here (yet). Tannenberg (Das Duell, Dancing About) is confusingly similar to National (Kill your Darlings!). Seeing all the elements of the eclectic visual identity in context, I must admit that, from a formal standpoint, it makes sense to include some simpler, unadorned typefaces – blackletter grotesks, so to say – in the mix.

The backside of each sticker holds information about the event. This text is presented rather conventionally, in Akzidenz-Grotesk.

The showcases on the outside of the Volksbühne building display the monthly program, unfolded. The actual agenda is not in blackletter, but in Akzidenz-Grotesk. The URL and the verso with the Warhol quote is in Deutsche Reichsschrift.

The figures on the monthly program leaflets for August/September and October are from Tannenberg Schmalfett.

The assorted take-away flyers, as they are offered in the Volksbühne foyer.

Posted as an addendum to my blog article about the Volksbühne poster campaign.

Volksbühne’s spielzeitheft – the season magazine – for 2013/14 is a large-format brochure (DIN A3) with 88 pages. There are a number of black-and-white photos by Lenore Blievernicht, but most of it is purely typographic. As with the posters, a mix of blackletter typefaces has been used, but here the palette is even wider.

Typesetting German text in blackletter traditionally requires two forms for the lowercase ‘s’: the ‘long s’ (ſ) is the default. The round one, with which we are more familiar today, may only go at the end of words (more precisely: at the end of morphemes, which include prefixes or parts of compounds). The rules are in fact slightly more complicated than that, but not much. If you are interested, you can find a serviceable guideline by Friedrich Forssman both in Albert Kapr’s Fraktur and in Judith Schalansky’s Fraktur Mon Amour. Or get yourself an old edition of the Duden.

In the blackletter orgy that is the new identity of the Volksbühne Berlin, these orthotypographic rules have been ignored, much to the regret of the typography teacher in me. If you choose to use blackletter, I feel you should go all the way, and respect the special rules that come with the genre. Seeing an ‘ſ’ in final position like in -haus, das, Eins etc. hurts my eyes. Having an inappropriate ‘ſ’ in the middle of a word is worse. The theater’s name should have an ‘s’, because it is Volks·bühne (“people’s theater”). With an ‘ſ’, it reads Volk·sbühne, which is nonsense. It is similar to wrong hyphenation, think the·rapist vs. ther·apist.

It would have been understandable if LSD decided to dispense with the ‘ſ’, because it is so uncommon today. Heck, I could possibly even understand it if they used ‘ſ’ exclusively, for it is such a weird character! What they did, however, is always using the default glyph of the respective font. Sometimes that’s the ‘s’, sometime the ‘ſ’. (Note that almost all digital blackletter fonts come with both forms, even the freebies.) A pragmatic decision? I call it lazy and ignorant. But who knows – maybe the ignorance is intentional, and the carefreeness with which the rules were violated is another factor that helps undermining the historic burden of German blackletter in general, and of the simplified gotisch types from the 1930s in particular.

The cover and a few divider pages like this one are printed in orange. Only there, the letterforms are scribbled. The rest shows the glyphs as they are included in the fonts, be they razor-sharp or chubby. The stacked letters for neu (“new”) were handdrawn after the ultrablack Avebury, which was designed in 2005 by Jim Parkinson, “inspired by an early blackletter from the Caslon Foundry”.

A series of video presentations by Jürgen Kuttner, with a title that references the first stanza of the Deutschlandlied, typeset in Tannenberg Fett (1934).

The schmal (condensed) cut of Rudolf Koch’s Wallau is another typeface that was released in 1934.

The German umlaut dots on ‘äöü’ once started life as a superscript ‘e’. Linotype Textur exhibits this historic form.

Three lines of Deutsche Reichsschrift (1915–35) by Arthur Pestner. The third word reads Eins (“one”), not Einf. It should be with a round ‘s’, though, as it is the last letter in the word.

The blackletter hyphen typically is double and slightly angled. When centering lines horizontally, make sure to adjust optically and compensate for hyphens and other punctuation. Of course, this only applies when you’re aiming for fine typography. LSD Design obviously isn’t.

Baumeister needs a ‘long s’, and ideally an ‘ſt’ ligature. Wilhelm-Klingspor-Schrift indeed has such a ligature, even in the digital versions. Furthermore, in German blackletter, there can never be two ‘round s’ in a row. At the end of words, a double ‘s’ becomes an eszett: Solneß.

Bayreuth (1932 or 1935) paired with Schmalfette Gotisch (1934). Both typefaces were originally designed by F.H. Ernst Schneidler. Schottenstück should be with an ‘ſ’ and ligatures for ‘ch’ and ‘ck’.

12-Spartenhaus is set in National Fett (1934). The roman numerals on the verso denote the month of the event – this play is staged from October. The numerals as well as the small print is in Akzidenz-Grotesk.

“The Youth Theater” – the word Jugend in Tannenberg looks familiar, but it’s not a comfortable association.

Volksbühne in Tannenberg – just like it was in 1936? Not really: it’s handdrawn, it’s in bright orange, and it doesn’t give a damn about the s-rules.

The Anarchistic Pogo Party of Germany (Anarchistische Pogo-Partei Deutschlands, APPD) relies on Rudolf Koch’s Deutsche Schrift for its vulgar campaign pledges. It is the only consistent use of blacketter – albeit satirical – in a German party identity in recent years. Posted here to be referenced from my blog post about the 2013 Volksbühne Berlin posters.

“You have no choice” – unlike 1998 and 2005, the APPD does not take part in the 2013 German federal election.

“Make a monkey of yourself!”

“My vote for the trash!”

The APPD distributed countless posters and shirts with provocative and obscene slogans.

Evening Edition is a daily news briefing produced by Mule Design and delivered via email, website, and podcast.

A blackletter logo helps achieve the brand’s classic newspaper look, though they could have done a little better than Fette Kanzlei, one of many old Frakturs digitized by Dieter Steffmann. The spacing is uneven and the little decorative strokes at the top-right of letters like ‘i’ and ‘n’ create some uncomfortable moments — especially when the mark is as tight as the designers want to set it here. They could get better results from a simplified blackletter like Amador. Plus, it’s by a Mule Design neighbor, Jim Parkinson, who lives and works just across the San Francisco Bay from the studio. Coincidentally, the guy is famous for repairing newspaper logos.

Fraktur quibbles aside, here’s a nice touch: the Evening Edition designers made an identity device out of the round ‘i’ dot in Kanzlei. The little circle is reprised in red at the center of the logo and at the end of each day’s news.

The site makes liberal use of webfonts. Text is set in FF Meta Serif, with FF Tisa for date heads and Prenton Condensed for story heads. The overall look is very much that of a contemporary, web-friendly news source — serious but not stuffy.

Deep respect to the editors for getting the apostrophes right in “Rock ’n’ Roll’.

The single-column responsive layout.

Granted, using Deutsche Schrift in all-caps is probably the perfect typographic equivalent to the hairdo and the outfit.

Apple’s newly announced iOS 7 brings a long-rumored “flatness” to the homescreen. The most visible typographic change is a lighter and more tightly spaced Neue Helvetica, a move that I’ll cover in more detail later. But first, a couple bits that noticeably depart from Helvetication: the Camera app and the Newsstand icon. The new look for Apple’s magazine and newspaper app emulates a group of publications, each with nameplates, making this icon stand out from the simple pictograms of the other system apps.

I cannot positively identify the “News” type, but it appears to be based on Friedrich Bauer’s 19th-century Gotisch. The Apple designers didn’t seem to be happy with the unfamiliar Fraktur ‘w’: they replaced it with a rotated ‘m’ — a thing they are known to do.

Other than the Calendar, Clock, and Maps apps, Newsstand is the only icon with type and a consipucuous showcase of multiple typefaces.

The icon as shown in the iOS 7 intro video, along with the underlying design grid for all the app icons.

Feel you’re missing out on awards? Make your own! Jessica Hische provides the necessary tool for it, complete with rainbow gradients, unicorn cats, and Jim Parkinson’s Cabazon, which makes for a great certificate blackletter. The generator can also be used to give kudos to other undersung heroes, like the behind-the-scenes guy who makes Fonts In Use possible.

The interdisciplinary festival “Alter Schwede!” features readings, concerts and text/sound-performances by 16 writers and musicians from Sweden and Berlin representing different aesthetic concepts, scenes and generations. Each night, the performances move freely between improvisation and montage, language poetry and social realism, new music and noise, concrete poetry and fragmentary prose.

ausland-berlin.de

The blackletter in use here – Plakat-Fraktur – is probably a profusely crude digitization of an uncredited historic poster typeface. It comes bundled with the similarly pink Fraktur Mon Amour. While it is refreshing to see blackletter used as a matter of course, I could imagine lots of more suitable options from that genre. Furthermore, traditional typesetting rules like the ‘long s’ (ſ) or ligatures have been neglected here, although the necessary glyphs are included even in a freebie like Plakat-Fraktur.