The repetition of simple geometric shapes forms a daily part of our environment. Throughout the 20th century – and into the 21st – typefaces whose designs have taken advantage of this have remained popular. But finding exactly the right mood can be tricky. For your convenience, we have grouped some of our favorite geometric typefaces (mostly sans serif and symbol) into four categories: circles, squares, ovals, and triangles.
Introduction
Many typeface catalogs, including our own, group all serif typefaces together under one umbrella-category. But in truth, there are many different kinds of serifs, e.g., Renaissance serifs, baroque serifs, unbracketed modern serifs, Latin serifs, wedge serifs, etc. One of the most popular styles of seriffed letter, especially for display type, remains the slab serif.
The slab serif is a genre of letterforms that has been in use for almost 200 years. Throughout this time, many
[...]Victor Hammer – born 9. 12. 1882 in Vienna, Austria, died 10. 7. 1967 in Lexington, USA – printer, painter, graphic artist, architect, type designer, sculptor, teacher, publisher.
1897: apprenticeship with an architect and town planner. 1898: studies at the art academy in Vienna. 1922: moves to Florence. Opens and runs a printing workshop in Florence. 1923: makes the acquaintance of Rudolf Koch. 1929: he and his printing works move into the Villa Santuccio in Florence and the business is
[...]Richard Isbell, a contemporary graphic designer and type designer of Detroit, Michigan, created the fonts Americana® (1965) and ITC Isbell® (1981, with Jerry Cambell). He designed Americana in honor of the then upcoming U.S. Bicentennial. The most distinguishing feature about Americana is its extremely large x-height. The letter proportions are very wide, with short ascenders and descenders. Americana works well for short texts, such as headlines or ad copy.
ITC Isbell, is a highly
[...]Heinrich Jost – born 13. 10. 1889 in Magdeburg, Germany, died 27. 9. 1948 in Frankfurt am Main, Germany – typographer, type designer, graphic designer. Trained as a bookseller and also attended courses at the Kunstgewerbe- und Handwerkerschule in Magdeburg.
1908: moves to Munich. 1911: takes evening courses at the Kunstgewerbeschule in Munich under Paul Renner and Emil Preetorius. Works as a book designer and graphic artist. 1923–48: art director of the Bauersche type foundry in Frankfurt am
[...]American designer Stanley Davis created the font Amelia™ in 1965. What sets Linotype Amelia apart from all the rest are its unusual inner spaces. Their teardrop forms lead the readers eye through the line of text. These teardrop shapes can also be seen in the contours of the characters themselves, making the letters look rounded and flexible. Amelia speaks the language of the digital age. The flowing strokes and round forms give it an uncomplicated and lively look.
The designer Arthur Baker created the following fonts: Amigo™, Baker Signet™, Kigali™, Marigold™, Oxford™, Pelican™, Sassafras™, Visigoth™.
John Benson – born 1939 in Newport, Rhode Island, USA – lettering artist, stonecarver.
John Benson has designed and carved headstones, civic and memorial tablets, and architectural lettering since he graduated from the Rhode Island School of Design as a sculpture major. In 1964, he was commissioned to design and carve the inscriptions for the Kennedy Memorial at Arlington Cemetery. John Benson created inscriptions for famous buildings such as the Prudential Center in Boston, the National
[...]Lucian Bernhard – born 15. 3. 1883 in Stuttgart, Germany, died 29. 5. 1972 in New York, USA – graphic artist, illustrator, painter, type designer, interior designer, teacher. Born as Emil Kahn, he assumes his pseudonym in 1905. Mostly self-taught, he studied briefly at the Akademie iin Munich.
1901: moves to Berlin. 1903: wins a poster competition for Priester matches. 1904: art director of the Deutsche Werkstätten für Handwerkskunst. 1910: works with Hans Sachs on the publication of the
[...]David Farey (born 1943) created the fonts ITC Beesknees™ (1991), Bodoni™ Unique, Cachet™, Font, Gabardine, Greyhound™, ITC Highlander® (1993), ITC Johnston™ (with Richard Dawson, 1999), Little Louis, ITC Ozwald® (1992), Virgin Roman, Zemestro™ (2003), Tanseek Modern™ (with Arlette Boutros, Mourad Boutros, Richard Dawson, 2008), Tanseek Traditional™ (with Arlette Boutros, Mourad Boutros, Richard Dawson, 2008), Azbuka™ (with Richard Dawson, 2008).
Karl-Erik Forsberg – born 1914 in Munsö, Sweden, died 1995 – type designer, typographer. Trained at the School for Book Crafts in Sweden.
1938–41: studies at the Akademie für Graphische Künste und Buchgewerbe in Leipzig. 1942–49: designer for the publishers Almqvist & Wiksell, the University of Uppsala press. From 1950 onwards: designer for the publishers P. A. Norstedt & Söner. Besides book designs, Forsberg has designed stamps and produced magazines and stamps. 1954: a bible is published
[...]The French designer Thierry Pulfoulhoux (born 1961) created the font ITC Korigan™ in 1997. ITC Korigan is uncial typeface which he wanted to offer as an alternative to Victor Hammer's American Unicial™, which remains for him "the uncial character of reference." The roundness of an uncial gives it the look of pearls on a string, as Hammer said, and ITC Korigan is true to its heritage in this respect. Despite the roundness, however, the forms remain familiar and legible to the modern eye.
The British designer Andrew Smith created the fonts Barbed Wire, Chiller™ (1995), Chipper™ (1995), Jokerman™ (1995), Retro Bold™ (with Colin Brignall, 1992), Scratch™ (1995) and Smudger™ (1994).
Swedish designer Bo Berndal created the following fonts:
Belltrap™ (1995), Benedikt (1991), Berndal™ (2002), Boberia™ (1994), Boscribe™ (2005), Bosis™, Brigida™ (1995), Buccardi™ (2003), Byngve™ (2002), Carl Beck (1992), Linotype Dala™ (1999), Exlibris (1992), Frisans™ (2005), Golota (1997), Grafilone™ (1994), Grantofte (1995), Johabu (1989), Läckö (1993), Lebensjoy (1993), Logoform (1992), Magellan (1993), Maricava (1994), Naniara (1997), Olaus (1992), Promemoria (1996), Sabellicus,
[...]American designer Paul Veres created the fonts Linotype Aperto™ (1996), Banjoman™ (1996) and Caterina™ (2004).
Linotype Aperto is a typical text font in the style of transitional faces, like its often-used cousin Times. It is available in roman, semibold and bold weights, each with its matching italic. The roman weight is complete with old style figures and small caps. Its balanced, reserved appearance makes Aperto extremely flexible, good for long texts as well as headlines.
Most of the
[...]Designer Gabriel Martínez Meave created Arcana™ in 2003.
Arcana Manuscript is a calligraphic exploration of the Victorian gothic aesthetic that created literary classics such as Frankenstein and Dracula. Gabriel Martínez Meave first wrote with a fountain pen, then digitized the results to create this unique typeface. “Arcana” takes its name from the ultimate secrets that lie behind astrology, alchemy, and magic. In gothic novels, such secrets were written in forbidden books,
[...]Ray Cruz’s philosophy is “Learn by Doing.” This is emphasized to his lettering students, and practiced throughout his career. After graduating from New York City’s High School of Art & Design, Ray continued to hone his craft by working in several of New York’s top custom lettering studios. The more he drew letters, the better he got. His expertise in custom lettering and typographic design has brought him notoriety from ad agencies, publishers, and firms
[...]Using digital technology, Philip Bouwsma synthesizes contemporary type styles with traditional and historic scripts and symbols from the Middle Ages and Renaissance. A lifelong calligrapher, Bouwsma also expresses his passion for the calligraphic form into his work. He attended the University of California at Berkeley, majoring in history and Greek. His love of letters, however, lured him away from arcane history to a career filled with art, design and the alphabet. Over the years, Bouwsma has
[...]Founded by Cynthia Hollandsworth Batty in the mid-1980s with the goal of creating new typefaces. There was some collaboration with the calligrapher Arthur Baker.
What do Disney’s Lion King and our new typeface releases have in common? Hans Bacher. Born in Germany, where he worked as an animation artitist and educator, Bacher now lives in Southern California where he creates stylistic designs for Disney Feature Animation. Trained in graphic design, and a winner of international awards for his animation, Bacher is also probably the only type designer that is a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
Steve Mehallo is an art director who lives in Mountain View, California. His clients have included large corporations, magazines, newspapers, legal and public planning firms, as well as art groups.
Mehallo enjoys mixing retro design with post modern elements, allowing good typefaces to breathe properly, and doing things with photography that confuse his parents. Lately he has also experimented with cartoon illustration.
In 1991 as an experiment, Adam Roe decided to found Lunchbox Studios. Since then, Adam has become president and founder of his second company, Reelhouse Footage and FK in Los Angeles, California.
www.lbox.com
Rotis font family
This font family consists of all versions of Rotis®, named by Otl Aicher after the village in the Allgäu where he has lived since 1972. Aicher’s goal was to design a family of fonts which could serve almost any typographical purpose. Rotis® gives an impression of both strength and generosity and all four versions can be used interchangeably with one another. Rotis® is suitable for book/text, documentation/business reports, business correspondence, magazines, newspapers,
[...]Im Archiv der Font-Beiträge finden Sie weitere Artikel.
Der typografische Tipp des Monats von Akira Kobayashi, dem künstlerischen Leiter bei Linotype!
Oktober 2007: Ein paar Worte zum Thema Buchstaben-Spationierung/Unterschneidung
Optische Spationierung mit Adobe InDesign
Adobe InDesign enthält eine Option, die das optische Spationieren oder Unterschneiden zwischen Glyphen-Paaren ermöglicht. Die Anwahl der optischen Spationierung überschreibt die metrische Information, die im
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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
[...]Berling™ Nova Sans schließt sich der Superschriftfamilie Berling Nova an
Initial concepts for comprehensive type systems surfaced as early as the 1930s, yet they remained the exception. In the days of hot-metal typesetting, handbooks generally recommended creating typeface mixtures from a single type family, a family being understood as including all of a typeface’s weights, such as light, normal, semi-bold, and bold, and including all of the italic weights as well. A well-rounded type family also includes small caps, tabular and old-style figures. These days, the
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Amelia and Banjoman are trademarks of Linotype GmbH and may be registered in certain jurisdictions.
Alexa, Andreas, Balzano and Banshee are trademarks of Adobe Systems Incorporated which may be registered in certain jurisdictions.
Amigo and Hiroshige are trademarks of Alpha Omega Typography.
Bauer Bodoni is a registered trademark of Bauer Types. Beton is a trademark of Bauer Types.
Arcana is a trademark of Gabriel Martínez Meave.
Benguiat is a trademark of International Typeface Corporation and may be registered in certain jurisdictions.
Americana is a registered trademark of Kingsley/ATF.
Art Gallery, Bangor, Barclay Open, Basque, Belltrap, CG Alpin, Mariposa, Tresillian and Uncial are trademarks of Monotype Imaging Inc. and may be registered in certain jurisdictions.
Rotis is a trademark of Monotype Imaging Inc. registered in the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office and may be registered in certain jurisdictions.
Ben Franklin is a trademark of The Monotype Corporation and may be registered in certain jurisdictions.
Baker Signet is a trademark of VGC Corporation.
Berling is a trademark of Verbum AB.
