Kerstmis by Dick Bruna
Contributed by Matthijs Sluiter on Dec 26th, 2019. Artwork published in
circa 1963
.
Source: studioandarte.nl License: All Rights Reserved.
Kerstmis (“Christmas”) is a children’s book, designed, written and illustrated by Dick Bruna. The book retells the story of the birth of Jesus. Originally published in 1963, it was re-released many times ever since. The edition shown here is published by Mercis. In later years, a nativity scene was produced, based on Bruna’s illustrations. Columna (drawn by Max Caflisch for Bauer, 1952) is used for the book title.
Source: www.bol.com License: All Rights Reserved.
Source: www.kinderfeestwinkel.nl License: All Rights Reserved.
3 Comments on “Kerstmis by Dick Bruna”
“KERSTSTAL” features a clunky A that doesn’t belong to Columna. My guess is that the designers of this contemporary brand extension didn’t find the right font and sourced the required letters from the original book cover and added the missing A themselves. There are at least three commercial digitizations of Columna on the market, including solid and shadowed styles, but strangely enough, none of them covers the original open caps.
Oomph. That’s one ugly A. I am surprised I overlooked it at first.
I spotted it only because I wanted to see which of the alternates for M and R were used. Here’s a glyph set of the original foundry type by the Bauer foundry. The index card is reproduced from Hans Reichardt’s Bleisatzschriften des 20. Jahrhunderts.
Did Linotype bother to include the pointed N and wide R in their “Columna Pro”? Nope. These letterforms can be found in Castcraft’s unauthorized OPTI Columna, which in turn doesn’t feature the other forms. If you want the wide M, you have to draw it yourself. It’s not included in any of the digital versions.