When approached to give informal advice on the redesign of the leading German weekly Der Spiegel, Luc(as) de Groot offered to design a completely new headline font. A newly developed typeface, he argued, would lend an unmistakable personality to the magazine. He worked late nights for a week and sent in sketches; the designers immediately ordered six weights. Says Luc(as): "I get a weekly free copy of the magazine as long as the typefaces are being used - it’s been ten years now." More…

The Spiegel typeface embodies an interesting paradox: the shapes and proportions of an American-style gothic - the ultimate industrial typeface - are combined with the subtle diagonal stress and almost imperceptible traces of handwriting that are typical of most of Luc(as)'s text faces. Although conceived as a headline face, Spiegel is perfectly suited for medium-sized body text. Designers who can do without small caps and oldstyle figures will find it a pleasant, unobtrusive text face for brochures and illustrated books. The Condensed version is an elegant, spacing-saving headline font.

The current OpenType version includes character sets for dozens of languages including special sets for Central European, Baltic, Icelandic and Turkish.