On the occasion of its 30th anniversary, Tipoteca Italiana Fondazione launched its new web app, a multimedia tool designed to enhance and expand the visitor experience.

Conceived as a 20-stage digital journey through the exhibition, the web app offers users an interactive guide enriched with audio content, descriptive texts, and historical documents. It is accessible free of charge via smartphone at app.tipoteca.it, whether used on-site for an independent visit or off-site to explore Tipoteca’s extensive archival collections.

This new tool features typefaces specifically developed for digital environments, inspired by the rich heritage of Italian typography. For its debut, the web app showcases Fabbrica, a typeface designed by Michele Patanè for CAST Foundry.

Tipoteca Italiana is a unique museum dedicated to the history and culture of type and printing. More than a traditional museum, it functions as a vibrant hub encompassing an archive, print shop, library, gallery, and auditorium. Through its exhibitions, workshops, and public programs, Tipoteca fosters dialogue between historical craftsmanship and contemporary design. It stands as Italy’s most important institution devoted to the art of letterpress and typographic heritage.

Folder and specimen for the introduction of Wilke Antiqua for phototypesetting, published by Linotype around 1988. The brochure is set in the three weights of Wilke, in roman and italic styles, and also showing the originally available oldstyle numerals and small caps. Conceived by Martin Wilke, it contains various calligraphic works by the lettering artist and typeface designer who died in 1993. Typographical design, layout and production work by Ralf Rudorf of Sedley Place Design, Berlin branch, Germany.

Letterpress printing is probably one of the most important inventions in human history – it has made the dissemination of knowledge possible. However, in view of the current state of technology, letterpress printing no longer seems up to date. Offset and digital printing have replaced the historical book printing process. But is it really no longer relevant today? The project Modern Ways of Historic Printing aims to find out if and how designers still work with letterpress technique today and whether a combination with contemporary techniques can produce creative innovations to the design.

In order to explore the topic experimentally, a typeface was designed and translated into a modular letter system for letterpress printing, which was used to print a poster installation.

Limited edition book exploring the origin and legacy of the Sabon typeface. A book in three parts: English translation of Jan Tschichold’s 1967 essay ‘The life and work of the type founder Jacob Sabon’; first English translation of Jost Hochuli’s ‘Sabon-Antiqua: a new typeface’ originally published in Typografische Monatsblätter, 2, 1969; and, a number of further texts by and about Tschichold and his Sabon explore typographic arrangements of Sabon-Antiqua, kursiv and halbfett in all available sizes up to 48 Didot of Stempel foundry type for hand composition. English, French and German languages are shown. Monotype 9, 10 (a special casting with long descenders), and 12D are also featured. All the type is hand set and letterpress printed on a 1964 Korrex Hannover test press and a 1905 Schelter & Giesecke Phoenix IV art platen. Mould-made ‘bütten’ papers from the German mills of Zerkall and Hahnemühle. Bound by hand with cloth spines and marble paper sides.

See Corvus Works for more images.

Book exploring the Garamond renaissance in the 20th century, culminating in Stempel Sabon, their final major type family for hand setting. Hand set and printed in Sabon 12, 14, 16, 20, 24, 28, 36 and 48 point Didot sizes on French Velin Arches paper in an edition of 110 copies.

The Stempel display type is the ‘true’ form of Sabon designed by Tschichold. It’s very different to machine composition type, and the photo and later digital types based on it.

See Corvus Works for more information about this limited edition.

This book is an examination of one of the most popular typefaces ever created, Futura, designed by Paul Renner and released by Bauer in 1927.

Originally developed as a a catalog, a reference source to accompany an exhibition of the same name at the Gutenberg Museum in Mainz, the book was edited by the museum’s director, Dr. Annette Ludwig, and two professors of the Mainz University of Applied Sciences, Dr. Isabel Naegele and Dr. Petra Eisele. It was published in November 2016 in German as Futura: Die Schrift by Hermann Schmidt Mainz and in October 2017 in an English translation (by Phyllis Elago) as Futura: The Typeface by Laurence King Publishers. This post shows images from both editions.

The design of the 520-pages tome in light mint green is by Stephanie Kaplan and Isabel Naegele. It won prestigious international awards: Gold at the European Design Awards as well as an Award for Typographic Excellence at the 63rd Type Directors Club Contest in New York.

The digital fonts used in the book are from the Futura ND typeface family, part of the Neufville Digital and Bauer Types typeface collection. As the owner of the Bauer foundry assets, Neufville has the most accurate digital reproduction of the original Futura drawings. Futura ND is supported by Architype Renner by The Foundry Types (not visible in the images shown here). The numerous illustrations include drawings, processs material, specimens, and in-use samples of Futura with Futura Condensed as well as of other members of the greater Futura series, including Futura licht, Futura Black, Futura Display, and Steile Futura.

Digital and analog flyers for a free talk about Franklin Gothic on October 24, 2022, as part of Type@Cooper and The Lubalin Center’s Herb Lubalin Lecture Series at Cooper Union in New York City.

The flyers are set entirely in various weights and widths of HEX Franklin. The main title is set with the HEX Franklin Tyght variable font for extra-tight letterspacing, including an alternate set of non-overshooting round glyphs intended for similarly tight line spacing.

The physical flyers were printed on various Astrobrights papers in two variants: one with tear-off tabs along the bottom and one without.

The “unreasoned” catalogue of the Musée de l’imprimerie et de la communication graphique (Museum of Printing and Graphic Communication – Lyon, France) presents the testimonies of fifty authors – printers, graphic designers, curators, bibliophiles, booksellers and researchers – who talk about their attachment to a document from the collections.

Richly illustrated, the book traces the evolution of the graphic world. In fifty years, the lead techniques inherited from Gutenberg have been overturned and replaced by photography, electronics, and computers. Today, the modes of production, distribution, and consumption of graphic products are profoundly transformed by the advent of the virtual document and digital networks and media.

To design the Guide déraisonné (published by Éditions 205), Bureau 205 used the typefaces Alcalá by Damien Gautier (205TF) and F Grotesk by Radim Peško.

These three books were created to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the Portuguese National Press, today known as INCM ­– Arte, Cultura, Segurança e Inovação. They are the result of a partnership between the Portuguese National Press and the publisher Pato Lógico.

Tipos Curiosos. Pequena História das Letras
Co-authored by Rubén Dias and Ricardo Henriques, with illustrations of Madalena Matoso, it is the story of the evolution of the letters, type and printing. The book is typeset in Azo Sans by R-Typography and Artigo by Nova Type Foundry.

O Que Vem a Ser Isto? A História de um Objeto Surpreendente
Co-authored by Rubén Dias and Rita Canas Mendes and co-illustrated by Tiago and Nádia Albuquerque, this is a story about the people and the processes behind the making of books. The book is typeset in Mazagan by Feliciano Type and Azo Sans.

A Lídia no País das Armadilhas
With texts by Almeida Martins and illustrations by Mantraste, this books show us how Lídia and her class went to visit the National Press and how that visit turned into a wonderful journey through time. The book is typeset in Azo Sans.

Tipos Curiosos. Pequena História das Letras – cover ft. Artigo

Tipos Curiosos. Pequena História das Letras – end papers

Tipos Curiosos. Pequena História das Letras – spread ft. Artigo and Azo Sans

Tipos Curiosos. Pequena História das Letras – spread about various writing systems

Tipos Curiosos. Pequena História das Letras – spread about cutting punches and striking matrices

Tipos Curiosos. Pequena História das Letras – spread about optical corrections in type design

Tipos Curiosos. Pequena História das Letras – spread about italics, small caps, monospaced type, and Roman numerals

Tipos Curiosos. Pequena História das Letras – spread about digital typography on mobile devices, including optical character recognition, optical sizes, and pangrams

Tipos Curiosos. Pequena História das Letras – featuring Portuguese type designers and their work

The spines of all three books

O que vem a ser isto? A história de um objecto surpreendente – cover set in Mazagan

O que vem a ser isto? A história de um objecto surpreendente – title page

O que vem a ser isto? A história de um objecto surpreendente – spread about book design and prouction, set in Azo Sans

O que vem a ser isto? A história de um objecto surpreendente – spread about book binding

O que vem a ser isto? A história de um objecto surpreendente – spread about imposition

O que vem a ser isto? A história de um objecto surpreendente – spread about paper production

O que vem a ser isto? A história de um objecto surpreendente – glossary and imprint

A Lídia no País das Maravilhas. A História maravilhosa da Imprensa Nacional ft. lettering

A Lídia no País das Maravilhas. A História maravilhosa da Imprensa Nacional – spread set in Azo Sans

A Lídia no País das Maravilhas. A História maravilhosa da Imprensa Nacional – spread about the history of the Portuguese National Press

A Lídia no País das Maravilhas. A História maravilhosa da Imprensa Nacional – spread about books and democracy

A Lídia no País das Maravilhas. A História maravilhosa da Imprensa Nacional – spread about printing presses through the ages

A Lídia no País das Maravilhas. A História maravilhosa da Imprensa Nacional – spread about recent inventions

Published by Éditions Non Standard (and co-published with Ésad Amiens), the book SANS (FR) 1628-1924 is written and designed by Sébastien Morlighem. For the typography, Moulin is used in two weights: Regular for the French text, Medium for English.

The aim of the publication is to highlight the irrepressible rise, in France, between the time of the Enlightenment and the beginning of the 20th century, of a form, a thousand-faceted kind of writing, which is often taken for granted and flourishes in common existence. This form is the ‘Sans’, i. e. the letter without serif, or ‘sans-serif’. “Sans” means “without” in French: a preposition indicating what is missing, what is not or no more present.

Moulin, a work-in-progress type family by Sandrine Nugue, is an asymmetrical flared design influenced by classical lettering and Adrian Frutiger’s underappreciated Icone from 1980. The balance of black and white and tension between inner and outer forms give a sculptural rather than calligraphic character, resulting in a comfortable texture for text and an assertive personality at display sizes. The Regular roman and italic are available from the Commercial Type Vault.

From metal type to phototypesetting, from the typewriter to the Minitel, and from engraving to dry-transfer lettering, the typographical work of Ange Degheest (1928-2009) testifies of the numerous technical changes the printing and telecommunication sectors went through during the second half of the twentieth century. Ange Degheest’s story is remarkable and a perfect illustration of the technical odyssey that took place throughout the twentieth century. Yet it is astonishing and disturbing to realise that, in spite of the quality and diversity of her lettering and type design work, her name has been forgotten amongst the list of those who have shaped the history of typography to this day.

Reviving Ange Degheest was collectively written in Benjamin Gomez's type design class at EESAB Rennes by Eugénie Bidaut, Oriane Charvieux, Anaïs Déal, Luna Delabre, Camille Depalle, Mandy Elbé, Justine Herbel and May Jolivet. Afterword ‘Ange Degheest, a female ghost of France’s type history’ by Alice Savoie. Edited by Alice Savoie and Jérôme Knebusch in the Poem Pamphlet series.

The digitized typefaces of Ange Degheest are available as free Open Source types at Velvetyne Type Foundry.

ABC – Geschichte und Form der lateinischen Schrift
ABC – History and Form of the Latin Script
ABC – Histoire et forme de l’écriture latine

Why do our letters look the way they do? Their original shapes have resulted from the interaction of writing material, writing speed and aesthetics. The alphabet used by the Romans changed depending on the writing material (stone, chisel, papyrus, parchment, writing tube, quill) and also over time. Since Gutenberg, books are no longer written by hand but printed, and since the invention of the typewriter at the end of the 19th century, people in business and administration no longer write but type. Finally, digitization has once again significantly reduced private writing by hand, but has made many typefaces available to everyone.

Based on Hans Eduard Meier’s standard work The development of writing, the editorial team, Rudolf Barmettler, Roland Stieger and Rupert Kalkofen, has completely revised the book, supplemented and expanded it according to the latest scientific findings. The new publication (in German, English and French) gives an overview of the development of the Latin script from the origin of the Latin characters, their changes through the centuries to the current state of digital fonts as well as the latest trends.

122 illustrations demonstrate this development and are commented on.

92 pages; 20×29,7 cm; Swiss paperback.
VGS Verlagsgenossenschaft St. Gallen

Schrift. Wahl und Mischung (“Type: selection and pairing”) is an extensive guide into the subject of choosing and combining typefaces. Written, designed and typeset by Kai Büschl and Oliver Linke – both typedesigners, typographers and lecturers – it details the historic, technical, and aesthetic background of todays typographic practice comprehensively. The book was published in 2021 by Rheinwerk Verlag and serves as a reference for both students and professionals alike.

Both content and figures use a range of typefaces, some of which are designed by the authors, and all available from their Lazydogs foundry: LD Moderne Slab and LD Grotesk are used on the book cover. The interior adds LD Moderne Antiqua, LD Elsnac, LD Fabiol and LD Vela to the mix.

The header of the website, featuring Gig prominently.

Women in Type is a three-year research project undertaken at the Department of Typography & Graphic Communication of the University of Reading between March 2018 and November 2021.

It highlights the work of women as key contributors to the design process of many renowned typefaces of the 20th century. The project is led by Prof. Fiona Ross with principal researcher Dr. Alice Savoie and post-doctoral assistant Dr. Helena Lekka.

The website was conceived by Alice Savoie (content and project management) and Mathieu Triay (design and code) as an accessible and interactive tool to share the project’s findings with the wider public.

In terms of design, the website makes heavy use of Gig designed by Franziska Weitgruber for any display use, including the titles of the articles. It was chosen because it gave an energetic hand-drawn feeling which was reminiscent of the work accomplished by the women of the type drawing offices while remaining fresh and contemporary.

To contrast, and for extended text use, the site uses Grotesque 6 by Émilie Rigaud. It follows the classical Stephenson Blake Grotesque model while bringing just enough modernity to turn the wonky shapes into an even and attractive texture, easily referencing the metal type era the research talks about. However, it doesn't come with its own italics. Émilie highlights (while wondering if what was initially a purposeful decision is now a small oversight):

Designers who used it since then have found alternatives, like underlining it or switching to a different typeface to create a nice contrast.

So to answer the brief, the website uses the variable font of Gig to achieve a matching stroke weight and x-height which allows it be used as italics elegantly inside text set in Grotesque 6.

Gig is used for article titles and headers while Grotesque 6 allows for more functional use in buttons.

An article page featuring Gig for the title and Grotesque 6 for the main text and captions.

Gig is also used for some pull quotes but also for the italics inside the text and captions

The Noord-Hollands Archief has begun to digitise materials from the archives of Joh. Enschedé of Haarlem, one of the longest-existing printing companies. One work this initiative has now made accessible everywhere is the monumental 1978 edition of Dr. Charles Enschedé’s 1908 book Typefoundries in the Netherlands, translated into English and edited by Harry Carter, Netty Hoeflake and Lotte Hellinga and printed by Bram de Does. (See discussion on TypeDrawers here, here.)

The book is handset in metal type, Jan van Krimpen's Romanée. Weighing in at 4.5kg, it includes extensive showings of historic metal types in Enschedé’s collections dating back as far as the fifteenth century, including full character sets and resettings of entire ornamented title pages and page layouts. These were mostly cast and typeset for the 1908 edition: due to the survival of the standing metal type they could be reprinted again for the 1978 edition. The paper was specified by de Does. It's an astonishing experience seeing historic typefaces cast and printed with modern technology, frequently revealing a staggering crispness the printing technology of their time often could not show.

De Does' design uses Romaneé with footnotes and section headings in the margin. A Lombardic capital-style C (see discussion below) is used as a bracket to mark additional information breaking into Enschedé's text. The body text is not set in columns.

Enschedé's 1893 commemoration of the foundry's 150th anniversary has also been digitised by Google.

Page layout, with footnotes at the bottom of the page.

Pages 404-5, display layout of modern-face types

Interlaced capitals of c. 1578, probably by Hendrik van den Keere (see John A. Lane’s 1995 article and 2004 book on the Plantin-Moretus collections, p. 42.) The Lombardic initial C is used as a bracket indicating an addition to Enschedé's original text. The translation uses ‘fount’, the normal use for metal type.

Engrossing initials, perhaps conceived by Willem Silvius. There were similar ‘secretary’ script types around the same time, both in the Low Countries and in London, and the James foundry had two in the spectacular “court hand” style. Both styles appear in an auction specimen of 1782; there's some more information in Carter and Ricks’ edition of Rowe Mores, pp. 112-3.

The oldest roman type for which matrices survive, Cologne, c. 1527. Enschedé were able to fill out the character set through electrotyping and cutting replacement characters.

Gotico-Antiqua, proto-roman, hybrid, 15th-century types between gothic and roman. Conference papers & exhibition catalogue. Edited and designed by Jérôme Knebusch. Co-publication Poem & Atelier National de Recherche Typographique [ANRT].

The bilingual publication (English and French) brings together researchers from the fields of typography, palaeography and incunabula studies, with a particular focus on type and letterforms. The relatively understudied period – after Gutenberg and before the consolidation of Jenson’s model – extends from the earliest traces of ‘humanistic’ tendencies to ‘pure’ roman type, including many cases of uncertain or experimental design, voluntary hybridisation and proto- or archaic roman. In 1459 in Mainz, Johann Fust and Peter Schöffer printed the Rationale Divinorum Officiorum by Guillaume Durand, using a typeface (now known as ‘Durandus’) that looked like no other before. From that point, we can follow a wide variety of developments, partly related to the travels of early printers from the Rhine area to Italy and France. By extension, the private press movement initiated by William Morris and Emery Walker at the end of the nineteenth century in England, revived some of those typefaces before they were once more largely forgotten.

Essays by Olivier Deloignon, Riccardo Olocco, Martina Meier, Nikolaus Weichselbaumer & Mathias Seuret, Dan Reynolds, Christopher Burke, Ferdinand Ulrich, Rafael Ribas & Alexis Faudot, Jérôme Knebusch. Foreword by Christelle Kirchstetter and Thomas Huot-Marchand.

The primary fonts used for typesetting the book are Almost Roman and Almost Gothic. Almost is complemented by Adobe Jenson, Alte Schwabacher, DTL Flamande, Jenson Rotunda (not pictured here). The book additionally showcases all 16 digital fonts (15 typefaces and one set of initials) made as part of ANRT’s Gotico-Antiqua project, produced by Rafael Ribas and Alexis Faudot and released in 2019 under the SIL Open Font License. Finally, the book has images of many other related typefaces which are discussed in the essays. These include Unger-Fraktur, Centralschrift, Morris Troy, ITC Golden Type, or Fanfare, to name but a few.

More information on the website of Poem editions

Spread with glyph sets of the 15 digital Gotico-Antiqua revivals. Not shown here are the Zainer Initials.

Louis Hoell and the making of the Eckmannschrift by Dan Reynolds

Louis Hoell cut the punches for the only published typeface Otto Eckmann ever designed. The story of the Eckmannschrift’s creation has often been told. In retrospect, it was the release that made Karl Klingspor’s reputation as a typefoundry director of note. Yet instead of looking at the Eckmannschrift from Klingspor or Eckmann’s point of view, Dan Reynolds’s essay directs its focus to what Hoell’s design contributions to the project might have been. With rare and unpublished material from the Klingspor archives in Offenbach am Main. Edited by Alice Savoie & Jérôme Knebusch as fourth in the Poem Pamphlet series.

Typeset in Instant and an unreleased italic version of Almost Roman. More info at poem-editions.com and the author's website.

The cover provides a table of contents, with an outlined letter a from each of the 16 featured typefaces.

CAST Foundry loves to spread the typographic word. This is why we have partnered with the independent Italian publishing house Lazy Dog Press to produce Cast It, a periodical publication that discusses the history and culture of type together with CAST’s digital fonts. Half magazine, half specimen.

Cast It #3, “Der Schriftgiesser” (“The typefounder”, by Johann Samuel Halle) is a description of typefounding included in Werkstäte der heutigen Künste oder die neue Kunsthistorie – a virtually encyclopedic series concerning crafts originally published in Leipzig between 1761 and 1779.

Thanks to Dan Reynolds, we now have Halle’s text for the first time in English. His translation comes with a foreword (also by Reynolds) which is also the only commentary on its contents ever published in any language.

The fonts used for the title page are, from top to bottom: Macho Modular, Rialto dF (“An Essay”), Voland Italic, Sempione Grotesk (“Typefounding”), Capraia Italic, Sole Sans, Saffran (“Werkstäte …”), Dic Sans, Valnera Italic (“Werkstäte”), Neon Nbl, Arzachel Italic, Voland (“Dan Reynolds”), Valnera Italic, Macho Moustache, and Rialto dF.

The opening page of the essay is set in Valnera Monster and a type weight gradient from Arkit.

Spread with Zenon, Gramma (left), and various styles from Neon Nbl (right).

Spread with cross-page text set in Macho Moustache.

Detail.

Sempione Grotesk and Sempione Modern.

English translation with two-column text set in Capraia, Gramma, Rialto dF, Divenire, Fulmar, and Arkit.

Cyrillize it! is a guide on Cyrillic typography for graphic designers, made by Yana Vekshyna as a student project at the Berlin International University of Applied Sciences. From Behance:

Designers don't necessarily need to speak a foreign language in order to work with its script. The whole approach of the book is based on drawing the parallels and finding similarities between Latin and Cyrillic script, typography and type design to make the material clear and understandable for any designer, who doesn't speak or write in any Cyrillic-based languages.

Erhard Ratdolt's Index characterum, the earliest known type specimen by Riccardo Olocco.

Erhard Ratdolt was one of the most successful and acclaimed printers of the 15th century. He was also a pioneer of new techniques and in 1486 he printed the earliest known type specimen. In this essay Riccardo Olocco analyses the only surviving copy of this single sheet with a discussion on the circumstances of its production and descriptions and identifications of the roman and rotunda types according to existing bibliographical references. The pamphlet is accompanied by a facsimile of the original type specimen.

Typeset in Instant and an unreleased italic version of Almost Roman. More info at poem-editions.com.