Architekturträume des Jugendstils at Kunstbibliothek
Poster for an exhibition of the work of Austrian architect Joseph Maria Olbrich (1867–1908) who co-founded the Vienna Secession and was a main proponent of Jugendstil or Art Nouveau architecture.
The typeface in use is Willow, created by Tony Forster for Letraset/ITC. The rough-edged caps-only face is based on a sign for the Willow Tea Room, one of three tea rooms in Glasgow designed by Charles Rennie Mackintosh (1868–1928). Mackintosh’s work was shown in the 1900 Vienna Secession exhibition. Willow was released in 1990, six years before the related and — in my perception — more popular ITC Rennie Mackintosh.
Willow’s raised ‘O’ with a colon underneath was considered too fancy for this poster, and got replaced by zeros. ‘Æ’ stands in for ‘Ä’. This might have been done to add some retro flavor, but the main reason certainly was to avoid the bothersome dots above cap height, which would have hampered the tight line spacing. The fitted pair for ‘CH’ is included in the font, together with about twenty other discretionary ligatures.
2 Comments on “Architekturträume des Jugendstils at Kunstbibliothek”
The O without dots is included as an alternate letterform in the font, together with the default O with the two dots below (see www.myfonts.com/fonts/itc/w…)
I stand corrected. The dotless glyph indeed serves not only as zero, but also as alternate O/o. At least in ITC Willow Std. Judging from MyFonts’ unreliable preview, it’s different in ITC Willow Com.