The first cuts of Kabel appeared in 1927, released by the German foundry Gebr. Klingspor. Like many of the typefaces that
Rudolf Koch designed for printing use, Kabel is a carefully constructed and drawn. The basic forms were influenced by the Ancient Roman stone-carved letters, which consisted of just a few pure and clear geometric forms, such as circles, squares, and triangles. Koch also infused Kabel with some elements of Art Deco, making it appear quite different from other geometric modernist typefaces from the 1920s, like
Futura.
Linotype has two versions of Kabel in its library.
Kabel has a shorter x-height, with longer ascenders and descenders, making it a bit truer to Koch's original design than the second version,
ITC Kabel, which was designed by
Victor Caruso. This version, also known in the United States as Cable, has a larger x-height, shorter ascenders and descenders, more weights ,and a diamond shaped i-dot.
Typefaces in the same oeuvre include
Avenir Next,
ITC Avant Garde Gothic,
Metrolite,
Metromedium,
Metroblack, and
Erbar, just to name just a few.
