Font Designer – Martina Balke

German designer Martina Balke created the font Stempel™ in 2002. The Stempel family consists of two fonts; each made to look like a set of block stamps. Each letter appears inside its own roughly drawn square. Stempel One’s letters are very simple form/counterform objects. Stempel Two’s forms are more ornate: each square stamp has a thin border inside of it, and then the individual letterforms have been knocked-out, so that the colored area depicts the counters around the letters rather than the letters themselves. As a line of text is typed, a box appears for each letter entered, and all of the boxes slightly nudge against each other to form the line.
The Stempel fonts have the appearance of a hand-made quality to them. Their forms appear too random, too delicate, and too thought out to have been made on a machine. Using these fonts will add a nice warm, linoleum-cut touch to your work.
Card „Bewußtsein”, designed by Martina Balke. Preliminary design of Stempel One and Two.
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