Miss Tique Damesmode

Logo and shop sign for Miss Tique, a ladieswear boutique with stores in The Hague and Voorburg, South Holland, spotted by Ramiro Espinoza of the local Retype Foundry foundry.

The typeface is Daphne. This bold cursive was designed by Georg Salden, derived from a calligraphic ad he had made for a hat shop in Dusseldorf in the 1960s. The Miss Tique wordmark features a terminal form for the e – one of many expressive swashes included in Salden’s design. These swashes played a key role in the advancement of independent font publishing. Salden recollects:

It was all about the bold italic line with large swashes. This font was accepted by Berthold for its Staromat [a photographic typesetting system for titles]. The various swashes could be copied onto other letters, depending on taste. This provided hundreds of possibilities. Although I gave exact instructions as to how these swashes were to be used, the production placed them wrong, some even upside down. This was one of the reasons why I decided to publish my fonts independently.

The rest is history. In 1972, Salden started the GST-Kreis, and directly provided its members – a number of typesetting studios – with his own typeface designs, bypassing the established font manufacturers and publishers, and pioneering a business model that has numerous followers today. Many of Salden’s phototype designs – including Daphne – have since been digitized, with the help of Ludwig Übele. They are available from TypeManufactur and LudwigType.

Today, Georg Salden turns 90. Happy birthday! See more of his multifaceted body of work in the congratulatory blog posts on LudwigType.de and PAGE online.