Typo-Galerie - Rotis Font Family

Font Designer: Otl Aicher, 1988

Otl Aicher named his typeface Rotis® after the small village in southern Germany where he has lived since 1972. The goal was to create an aesthetic type family which could fulfil a variety of typographic requirements. The result: a remarkable sans serif and a reserved antiqua with a total of 17 weights which combine extremely well with one another.

This unification of two classic forms was almost revolutionary in 1988. Over centuries, designers had strictly avoided blending serif with sans serif. Their point of view was that leaving the serifs off an antiqua and giving a sans serif new curves and edges might be something new, but not something better. But Rotis® was made based on exactly these principles and can boast of high legibility.

Otl Aicher clearly set a higher priority on the aesthetics of his typeface than on its practicality. He wanted to design a type which could become one with the content. Aicher drew each form again and again by hand, entered each change into the computer, and then went back to make even more corrections. The designer’s methods gave Rotis a high technical quality as well as its individual, handcrafted character.

Rotis can be used in a variety of applications and is even today one of the most successful text types. Many companies use Rotis as their company font, among them Nokia, FSB, Baumann & Baumann design studio.