important events used bastard blackletter typeface

The new version of Elfen-Fraktur is now available via FDI Type. So a while ago I began to digitize and revamp it. The designer has added little corners and weight changes throughout the design to make it work as a blackletter typefaces.Īn ad in Elfen-Fraktur, published in a German newspaper in 1928Įven with the huge market share of Stempel, the typeface wasn’t used very often and is almost forgotten today. While it has a monolinear look, it actually can’t be written. It’s easy to see how the designer struggled with the design concept. When I got my copy of this book and browsed through it, Elfen-Fraktur was the one design that fascinated me the most-but more for it’s uniqueness and peculiarities than its quality. The typeface then appeared in Stempel’s catalogue of 1925-with around 1200 pages one of the biggest type specimen book ever produced.Įlfen-Fraktur in the 1925 Stempel catalog Stempel, one of the largest type foundries in Europe at that time. Hoffmeister, which was later absorbed by D. The only two know designs appeared around 1920: The wobbly Lehmann-Fraktur and Elfen-Fraktur from an otherwise unknown designer listed as M Beck.Įlfen-Fraktur was originally published by the foundry H. Experimental monolinear blackletter fonts appeared occasionally like in this booklet for sign painters from a German pen maker who also sold pens for monolinear writing.īut such designs rarely made it into typefaces. This feature could almost be understood as a necessity to make blackletter fonts work. But they all shared one characteristic: the typical change of weight caused by the use of a broad-nip pen. Fraktur fonts were available in a great variety of designs-from thin and delicate calligraphic typefaces to bold and geometric. The most used category of blackletter fonts was Fraktur-a much more open and legible design than the original dark and narrow blackletter fonts in medieval books. In Germany blackletter fonts were in broad use until the middle of the 20th century. And since this type style developed somewhat independently of the Roman type style we use until today, blackletter developed some letter skeletons, which greatly differ from the Roman design and make them hard to read for many today. In blackletter fonts, elements which used to be rounded in preceding Latin designs were broken down to individual line segments with emphasised sharp corners. The German term “Gebrochene Schrift” (broken script) says it much better. But this appearance isn’t really the defining characteristic. The “black” in the English term blackletter refers to usually very dark appearance of these kind of typefaces. This article introduces the extended revival version of Elfen-Fraktur-a blackletter design originally published in 1919 in Germany.

Important events used bastard blackletter typeface