From April 1 to July 30, 2017, the Saarlandmuseum – Alte Sammlung and the Museum für Vor- und Frühgeschichte were jointly presenting an exhibition dedicated to an important cultural-historical phenomenon in Europe in the 18th and 19th centuries: the “Grand Tour”. This term stands for study trips, which at that time were considered part of the general education of the aristocratic upper class, and led to Rome as well as to the ancient ruins on the Gulf of Naples and in Sicily.

The book was designed by Studio RBƒK using Korpus Grotesk and an unidentified italic [Garamond Premier, see comments]. It was edited by Roland Mönig, Thomas Martin and Stefan Heinlein and published by Stiftung Saarländischer Kulturbesitz.

Cover of the exhibition catalog.

The Germanic Tribes. Archaeological Perspectives is an exhibition organized by Berlin’s Museum für Vor- und Frühgeschichte (Museum of Prehistory and Early History).

Broken up into seven chapters, the exhibition at the James-Simon-Galerie will offer insights into the archaeology of the communities who populated the area east of the Rhine and north of the Danube between the 1st and 4th century CE, for whom Caesar coined the term Germani to refer to various linguistic and ethnic groups living in this region.

The visual identity and communication for the exhibition were designed by Polyform and Studio Edgar Kandratian. The title Germanen (“Germanic tribes”) is broken up into three lines, maybe to playfully emphasize the etymological link to the modern term German. It’s shown in all lowercase letters, in white against a photographic image of what appears to be fur.

The font in use is Neue Machina Ultrabold. Released in 2019 by Pangram Pangram, Neue Machina is a concentrate of several of the most loved/hated trends and gimmicks in recent typeface design, like (almost) non-joining joins (M N 1 2), single flamboyant glyphs (g), an underbite e, and, of course, ink traps as a stylistic device. In an article for Typographica, Ksenya Samarskaya noted a resurgence of ink traps in 2018:

As a fan of error, serendipity, and misuse, I’ve always enjoyed the winks of oversized ink-trapped type. Though these days, the form falls more and more into pastiche. All these brute cutouts, these abrupt inorganic forms, who’ll likely never manage to trap any ink, mocking their earlier workhorse cousins.

In 2020, these mannered XXL ink traps have finally arrived on the big stage of Berlin’s billboards. In this case, I find them a surprising solution to the challenge of how to typographically express the foreignness of a culture from the dim and distant past, without reverting to faux-Runic letterforms.

Large-format poster in Berlin’s U-Bahn,

Exhibition website. UI design and typeface selection by Studio Edgar Kandratian and Polyform. The UX and the coding is by Smith.

The website pairs all-lowercase Neue Machine for the menu and headlines with text set in Fann Grotesque.