The goal was to develop a sanserif with the legibility of the best serifed typefaces. Therefore, Finnegan™ developed out of the internal structure of a humanist renaissance roman. However, the attempt to create a uniform stroke weight was abandoned in favor of a differentiated thick and thin contrast. The design was carried out almost entirely onscreen with the help of Ikarus M. This process required enormous amounts of time, but offered a decisive advantage: with the help of print-outs, every [...]
... achieving this goal was essential to the design. And this is how it was done: all of the typeface’s thick strokes have a taper. In every figure, the principal of form and counterform stands out; this is recognizable in the direction of movement, based in writing, from upper left to lower right. The up and down strokes end in residual serifs, underlining the principle of form and counterform. This dynamic design lends combinations of individual figures much energy and a high degree of [...]
On a lonely mountain in the Scottish highlands, the idea came to Jürgen Weltin to name his new typeface Finnegan™. In Fall 1995, there were three complete character sets in the weights Regular, Italic, and Bold (Bold would later become Semibold). He presented these results as his final project at the Technical College in Würzburg. In close collaboration with Linotype Library, Finnegan™ was altered further to make it more usable. The typeface was expanded into a family with several different [...]
German designer Jürgen Weltin designed Linotype Finnegan, a modern text design with roots in the humanist letterforms of the Renaissance. As the recognizable direction of movement in writing runs from upper left to lower right, Weltin mimicked this in his design: Linotype Finnegan's up and down strokes end in residual serifs. All of the thick strokes have a taper; horizontal strokes and curves are noticeably thinner than the verticals. This dynamic nature lends a combination of individualness and energy, along with a high degree of variety, to Linotype Finnegan.
Linotype Finnegan is a wholly new and unique typeface. It distinguishes itself through its extreme legibility, originality, and formal excellence. Linotype Finnegan makes fun to read longer texts non-stop. However, the typeface never distracts the attention from the text's content by forcing itself too much into the foreground.
Finnegan is a trademark of Linotype GmbH registered in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and may be registered in certain other jurisdictions.
Quality features
The Platinum Collection is the exclusive series of optimized classic typefaces from the Linotype Library.
XSF-Fonts are OpenType or TrueType fonts with an excellent appearance on screen at small sizes or low resolutions – especially engineered and optimized for exceptionally readable typefaces on computer screens using Microsoft® Windows operating systems.
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