A new wave of slab serifs hit the typographic world during the 1930s. Their style became very popular, and is still with us today. These letterforms appear to follow a “constructed” principle. Many of them have base forms similar to popular early 20th Century typefaces, but with slab serifs simply added on, i.e.,
Venus® and
Venus® Egyptienne.
The groundwork for this sort of slab serif was laid in Frankfurt, Germany, when
Rudolf Wolf designed the
Memphis™ typeface at the
D. Stempel AG foundry in 1929. After 1931, Linotype began to distribute Memphis matrices for its linecasting machines, bringing the face a worldwide audience. Memphis has a sans serif companion,
DIN Neuzeit™.
Another popular German slab serif is
Beton®, from
Heinrich Jost. Beton has a geometric nature, and may be seen as a match for
Futura®.
Adrian Frutiger’s
Glypha™ and
Serifa®, both designed during the 1960s, have also enjoyed widespread popularity. Both of these typefaces harmonize with
Univers™.
