Lomo is a lifestyle... – March 31, 2004

Internet age fonts now available from Linotype

Bad Homburg, March 31st, 2004. Linotype Library is now the official publisher of some quintessential typefaces for the internet age: the Lomo Font Dynasty. Directly inspired by the Lomo camera craze of the late 1990s, Swiss designer Fidel Peugeot developed a remarkably simple breed of fonts to match the spontaneous, universal appeal of the Lomo movement. With variants specifically designed for use in titles, web pages, print and animation as well as a wide selection of unique symbols, graphic designers now have the possibility to invent, construct and experiment in true Lomo tradition – intuitively and "just for fun".

What does lomography have to do with typography? It’s a question of spirit. The Lomo camera, originally manufactured in St. Petersburg, takes bright, colorful and slightly distorted pictures. The somewhat reckless style of these photographs, known as "lomographs", ignited a powerful grassroots movement that took the internet age by storm, giving a young and daring generation a visual language which crossed all international and cultural borders. Before long the "Lomo Style" spread into other creative fields as well, inspiring Swiss designer Fidel Peugeot to invent a form of type which drew on the same principles: a merging of low-tech and high-tech influences.

The spark for the first font came in 1997, stimulated by a "Photo Wall" exhibition of the Lomo artist Bernhard Winkler. Based on the standard dimensions of photographs (10 x 7), Fidel Peugeot set up a rectangular grid system to design a kit of building block-like letters, bringing to life the revolutionary typeface LomoWall. The font not only became an instant hit for titling, but from 18 points upwards, it also had the unique advantage of delivering exact pixel representations on the screen. With 14 weights to choose from, LomoWall is the perfect typeface building kit for the future.

This groundbreaking invention led to the development of the typeface LomoWeb, this time in direct cooperation with the Lomo parent company, meanwhile based in Vienna. As Lomo was in the process of creating a new website in 1998 and could find no appropriate font on the international market, Fidel Peugeot was commissioned with creating a typeface specifically for this purpose. The result was an all-caps miniature web font – based on a 5 pixel character height for the smallest possible use on a screen, while still clearly legible. This marked the birth of the first classic typeface developed especially for the web. To provide greater flexibility, today this font set includes a total of 10 weights.

The font LomoCopy was soon to follow. This family of typefaces was designed for longer texts, ensuring ideal readability – both on screen and printed. While the design was still committed to utmost simplicity and minimal use of pixels, the small "g" did receive a slight serif on its descender and the capital "T" was transformed to look something like a mushroom. All in all, an appealing, future-oriented look was achieved, with unique web legibility. LomoCopy now features a wide range of weights from narrow to wide and light to bold.

Further members of the Lomo Font Dynasty include the collection of symbols in LomoSamples, little rectangular designs which can be pieced together to form new patterns, and LomoActionSampler based on a grid of squares defined by round pixel points, ideal for application in web animations.

Other Peugeot originals are the pixel fonts for mobile telephones (TelepongCopy, T-Font, On/Off) as well as those for the Walking Chair design studio (Walking Chair Copy and Walking Chair Headline).

For styles conceived in the incubator of the internet age – spontaneous at heart yet digital in soul – plug into the Lomo Font Dynasty. It will alter your awareness of type forever.

Background information on the Designer Fidel Peugeot can be found on www.linotype.com in the section Font Lounge, in the category Font Designers.

Linotype GmbH, based in Bad Homburg, Germany, was founded 117 years ago and is now a member of the Heidelberg Group. Building on its strong heritage, Linotype Library develops state-of-the-art font technology and offers more than 5,500 original fonts, covering the whole typographic spectrum from antique to modern, from east to west, and from classical to experimental. Thanks to the browser and navigation system FontExplorer, all typefaces (in PostScript™ and TrueType™ format as well as more than 1.100 fonts in OpenTypeTM) are now available for instant download at www.linotype.com as well as on CD. In addition to supplying digital fonts, Linotype Library also offers comprehensive and individual consultation and support services for font applications in worldwide (corporate) communication.


If you would like further information, please contact:

Linotype GmbH
Du-Pont-Straße 1
61352 Bad Homburg
Tel.: +49 (0) 61 72 - 484 - 24 60
Fax: +49 (0) 61 72 - 484 - 499
E-Mail: [email protected]

Please find more typeface application samples on the Internet at www.linotype.com.
This press release is available as pdf file. Please download:
English long version (416 kb)
German long version (5,7 mb)
English short version (44 kb)
German short version (60 kb)