Karuta is a traditional Japanese card game where players listen to short descriptions read aloud from a reader’s card. Each turn, players race to grab the matching card with the corresponding picture or text, and the player with the most cards at the end wins.

Font Karuta is a variation designed for typography enthusiasts. Instead of pictures, the reader announces the font name and description on the reader’s card, and players compete to pick up the card displaying that font. The player who collects the most cards wins the game.

This edition is the “extension package” featuring only blackletter designs.

From top left to bottom right: Respira Black, FF Brokenscript, a couple letters from Breitkopf-Fraktur, Blackmoor, Claudius, an e and an exclamation mark from Old English, Wallau, Amador, Fakir, San Marco, American Text, Caslon-Gotisch, Engravers Old English, Marian Black, Fette Fraktur, Lucida Blackletter, JAF Herb, Gutenberg Textura, Alte Schwabacher, Goudy Text, Fette Kanzlei, and a tiny bit of Fette Gotisch. Featured in the game but not shown in the images are Deutsche Schrift and Wedding Text.

The box front features the title in Amador, with Clairvaux for the list of included typefaces. The Japanese font appears to be DNP Shuei ShogoMincho. The Font Karuta logo is in Akko.

The German-language game instructions are set in Gutenberg Textura with a headline in Blackmoor, in caps of alternating colors.

Source: freiheitsfonds.de Freiheitsfonds. License: All Rights Reserved.

Freiheitsfonds, or Freedom Fund, is an initiative started in December 2021 by journalist and activist Arne Semsrott. The aesthetics borrow heavily from the visual identity of the GTA series of video games. While Freiheitsfonds is also concerned with crime, it’s not about fast cars, guns, and violence, but rather about subways, buses, and missing tickets.

The initiative aims to abolish the criminal offense of fare evasion. The fund pays the fines of people who were imprisoned for transport fraud, because they weren’t able or willing to pay the fine themselves. Funded by donations from individuals, the initiative has collected more than 500,000 euros already, and used the money to free more than 500 people who were in jail solely because they couldn’t afford a ticket for public transport. As jails are very costly, this translates to savings for the German state of 5.8M euros.

The logo uses the freebie Pricedown – just like GTA – with a contour, some of the font’s interlocking alternates, and a euro symbol (€) in place of the second E, to underline the monetary aspect. “Raus aus der JVA” / “Get out of Jail” is set in Streamster, with a pink glow effect (cf. GTA Vice City). The supporting sans is Poppins. For the graphics announcing the recent Freedom Day on October 5, 2022, the designers selected Caslon-Gotisch (cf. GTA San Andreas).

Source: freiheitsfonds.de Freiheitsfonds. License: All Rights Reserved.

From the bilingual Freedom Fund website:

Riding without a ticket is a criminal offense in Germany. Thousands of people end up in prison every year because they can't afford a ticket for public transport. People spend up to a year in jail. Those affected are predominantly unemployed (87%), without a fixed address (15%) and suicidal (15%).

The offense was introduced by the Nazis in 1935. To this day, people are often punished more severely for riding without a ticket than, for example, people who drive drunk. Drunk driving is usually only punished as a misdemeanor.

No one should end up in jail because of a missing ticket! Therefore we demand that §265a StGB of 1935 be overturned. Riding without a ticket must be decriminalized and free use of public transport must be made possible over the long term! In addition, transport companies must stop prosecuting people who ride without a ticket. More info on the current research at FragDenStaat.

But we are not waiting for politics. The Freedom Fund initiative frees people from prison throughout Germany who are behind bars for "riding without a ticket". And because each day of detention costs taxpayers around 150 euros per prisoner, our initiative even saves the state money.

Source: freiheitsfonds.de Freiheitsfonds. License: All Rights Reserved.

Re:publica is an annual conference that deals with web-related topics like blogging, social media, digital society, and web politics. On the occasion of re:publica 13 which opened its doors in Berlin today, Wortfeld has published a series of historic conference posters, claiming that they were discovered “in the attic of the state archives in Berlin-Dahlem”. The posters purportedly prove that the roots of re:publica go back not only to 2007, but actually a full hundred years, when “engineers, artists, painters and musicians first met in a Berlin machine factory in 1913, under the wary eyes of the Prussian secret police”.

Although there are a couple of details that challenge their authenticity, the posters do a remarkable job at emulating the various historic styles of graphic design. It’s obvious that the designer(s) had lots of fun with these.
The images were published under a CC-by license.

While all genres here are more or less historically accurate, this spoof is easily detectable: The Art Nouveau letterforms by Charles Rennie Mackintosh (1868–1928) were not made into a typeface before 1996, when Phil Grimshaw digitized them as ITC Rennie Mackintosh. Also, such a combination of Jugendstil and blackletter was rather unusual.

Bonus points for correctly using the two forms of ‘s’ in ‘Diskuſſion’! (However, ‘Maſchinenfabrik’ would have needed a ‘long s’, too.)

Berthold Block is a very plausible choice for a German interwar poster. The condensed weights were not released before 1920, though.

Constructivist typography similar to the works of El Lissitzky or Jan Tschichold, featuring the rarely seen P22 DeStijl Stencil. Erbar-Grotesk schmalhalbfett was not available before 1929, but this still feels pretty correct.

The 1928 poster is a nod to Kurt Schwitters and his MERZ collages, with a mix of Wilhelm Klingspor Gotisch, Akzidenz-Grotesk, some more Rennie Mackintosh, Block, Futura – and Adobe Garamond (1989).

This one is great! Every design that uses Reporter is great. The secondary typeface is Alternate Gothic No. 2.

Roger Excoffon’s Banco (1951) and Hermann Zapf’s Optima Bold (1968) – almost. Fun fact: A specimen for Optima showed an airplane, too.

This poster feels the least authentic to me. Yes, Helvetica was already released in 1958 (at least the regular weight). Yes, multi-color photographic reproduction was possible, theoretically. The devil is in the details: the spacing – word spaces in particular – is way too wide for a pre-digital poster design.

The 1963 edition is more credible: an economical one-color print with a coarse half tone image.

Helvetica again, now paired with Times Extra Bold – looks quite authentic. But would they really have used the term ‘Westberlin’?

ITC Lubalin Graph was released in 1974, but apart from that, this is another good one. ITC Avant Garde Gothic really shines with that rainbow. Minor quibble: It looks more like a paperback cover than a poster.

Futura Extra Bold Condensed, tightly spaced and with heavy underlines – spot on for Germany anno 1978, cf. this poster by Klaus Staeck.

More Futura Condensed, now in several weights and all caps. Complete with a reference to the “Btx-Leitseite” – hilarious!

The 1988 poster features various styles of ITC Franklin Gothic. With the contrasty color blocks and the pipes as date separators, it successfully establishes a late eighties/early nineties atmosphere.

Props for using the actual Lucky Strike typeface here: This is Concorde, not Times New Roman.

Emigre’s Mrs Eaves indeed was an ubiquitous typeface in the late 1990s. Here it is paired with Akzidenz-Grotesk.

Last but not least, this is FF DIN Alternate (featuring the narrow C), with roughened contours.