Work in Progress: LD Moderne

Bold, modern-style typefaces seem to be an inconsistent implementation of the classicistic letter shapes. In search for a better approach, in 2013 Kai Büschl decided to reanimate an old modern style type draft and rework it. But instead of thickening the vertical stems, he rather designed the bold weight with heavier horizontal strokes and serifs. So the shifting towards the bold weight simultaneously is a shifting towars a slab serif typeface.

The fundamental idea of this concept is not as new as it first seemed to be. Research showed that efforts in this direction had been conducted before. Printed examples could be found e.g. in specimens of the Fann Street Foundry (look also for: Robert Besley and the Clarendon ionic typeface) or Theodore Low De Vinne’s »Correct Composition« issue of the »Practical Typography« books.

The new type family consists of 12 fonts with 6 »weights«, including italics with swashes and small caps. The fonts will cover pan european language support, four number sets and some other neat features like optical sizes (which are really smart in the context of high contrast typeface designs). Release is planned to be end 2015 or (really!!!) early 2016.

From Light to Bold

We recently extended our Finn type familiy:
The upright fonts are now available in Light, Regular, Medium and Bold.

Find the complete informations about Finn here.

New typeface “Streets of London” now available!

The time has come and the Streets of London typeface is finally available at our small but exquisite font library.

This unique typeface project made up a complete font family out of a capital alphabet designed by the British stone cutter and type designer David Kindersley (1915–1995), a former apprentice of Eric Gill. Initially created to set a new quality standard in street sign typography in the 1940s in England, it has now been extended to a font family suitable for manifold purposes.

Bitte setzen!

After three years it’s finally done: The »Fliegenprobe« – probably one of the last letterpress specimens – was released in a limited edition of 150, consisting of two volumes and an accompanying box with large format prints.



The project was started under the appeal »bitte setzen!« in summer 2008 by Munich Design­school (www.designschule-­muenchen.de) in collaboration with the letter­press printshop »Fliegenkopf« (www.fliegenkopf-muenchen.de). The ambitious goal was to create a specimen of the approximately 170 different typefaces of the workshop. 


What began with a handful of students was soon extended to a large number of helping hands beyond the school. Finally almost 100 »junior typesetters« were needed to manage the huge amount of work to inventory the typefaces and design, typeset and print the specimens.



Many lead and woodtypes – known and nameless ones – had been collected within the 20 years since the printshop was founded. The supervising instructors Oliver Linke and Michael Wörgötter had to do quite a bit of research to find missing names, designers, foundries or years of origin.



For the specimens’ wording the creators decided to use text material related to dadaism and concrete poetry as well as old and forgotten german words. In this way the specimens not only show typefaces with indication of its sources, but also became a pleasurable read representing literature and vocabulary of the letterpress era.

The complete set containing all type­faces of the printshop consists of:
Volume I (122 sheets) with lead typefaces (89 families).
Volume II (101 sheets) with poster typefaces (85 families), whereas typefaces taller than 12 cicero have been printed additionally on 69 large sheets (35 x 50 cm), enclosed in a box.

Streets of London …

… is the name of an upcoming typeface project which is currently in state of completion. It is related to the work of the british stonecutter David Kindersley (1915 – 1995). The project was triggered by tgm-leader Boris Kochan who stumbled across an intriguing street sign typography in London some 15 years ago.

Street sign on a building in Kensington/London //  Detail of an original iron cast sign

The originally iron casted capital letter signage was Kindersleys contribution to improve the legibility and visual quality of typography in public space.

Boris couldn’t let loose to his discovery over years, so he finally asked Robert Strauch to undertake some research with him in London and Cambridge. They met David’s widow Lida Lopez Cardozo Kindersley who provided them with the original letter models dating from the late 1940s.

Raising the treasure: Kindersley’s original letter drawings at Lida’s workshop

The first step was to redraw the caps accurately and with caution to the subtle details.
Based on this work Robert designed the lowercase letters thoughtfully caring to preserve the unique flavour of the model. After a period of refinement and testing, the resulting typeface was extended with accompanying italics and a bold style.

gotop