Roger Roberson skillfully adapted the sanserif to the monospace IBM typewriter at Lexington, Kentucky, in 1956.

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Helvetica grew in popularity throughout the 1960s and 1970s, and more versions of the family were introduced. This led to vast confusion: the same weight is often referred to by two different names, design features often vary from one face to another, and so on.

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Helvetica is one of the most popular typefaces of all time. It was designed by Max Miedinger in 1957 for the Haas foundry of Switzerland (the name is derived from Helvetia, the Latin name for Switzerland).

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As a student in Zurich, Adrian Frutiger began work on Univers, which would eventually be released in 1957 by the Deberny & Peignot foundry in Paris. The design is a neo-grotesque, similar to its contemporary, Helvetica.

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Secca is a fine and simple typeface honoring the roots of early German grotesque type designs but mastered for the needs of today.

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If a text is set in a good Egyptienne, we can observe a kind of sparkle in the lines. Egyptiennes are cheerful type faces, possibly due to the fact that they developed simultaneously with sans-serif faces. The design principle of a sign from the first half of the 19th century does not have such firm and long-established roots as for example, the Renaissance Roman type face; it is, therefore, much more prone to mistakes which are symptoms of a “decline”.

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Hiruko is a full family of 16 different styles. Inspired by the early Swiss movements, Hiruko offers creativity and clarity within many media. Influenced by Japanese culture, Hiruko is based on the idea that less is more, however this applies in other directions when referring to the amount of work gone into producing the type family.

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The present font project is inspired by a tombstone inscription on one German grave in northern Bohemia. Suitable combination: Plagwitz, Modell.

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Serifa was designed by Adrian Frutiger for the Bauer foundry in 1967. The letterforms are based on those of Frutiger’s earlier sans serif design, Univers. Square, unbracketed serifs have been added, making this a slab serif (or Egyptian) typeface.

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Developed by Adrian Frutiger for Bauer in 1966, Serifa is a slabserif based on the principles that led to the success of Frutiger’s 1956 sanserif, Univers. Glypha, designed by Frutiger for Stempel in 1979, is a version of Serifa with a moderately larger x-height; Stempel has paid royalties on Glypha to Neufville since 1984.

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All of a sudden, everything must be reasonable, serious; even the minute details of serifs are now rectangular, subordinated to an “idea”. The composition of a book comes closer to architecture; everywhere there is an abundance of blank space; the casting of both type faces and cannons advances towards perfection. The lack of emotions gave rise to desperate Romanticism, which did not manifest itself in book typography at all, as if the division of work in art had marked the industrial revolution. At the same time, at the beginning of the 19th century, when Caspar David Friedrich paints his snow-covered graves with forked, mutilated trees, Justus Erich Walbaum sits quietly in his Weimar workshop, establishing the German branch of Neo-classical typography. Beside Didot and Bodoni, Walbaum seems to stand rather on the margin of glory. His typeface, when judged according to the Neo-classical rules, is even a little bit “impure”. But this is precisely the reason why it is much more legible, softer and more humane than it would have been, if it had merely, blindly, aimed at an ideal.

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Prima is a series of fonts designed at Bitstream by Jim Lyles (Sans and Serif) and Sue Zafarana (Sans Mono), released in 1998.

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Egyptian, or slab serif, typefaces surged to popularity in the early 1800s. Memphis was the first Egyptian revival, designed by Dr. Rudolf Wolf in 1929 for the Stempel foundry.

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Based on the original design by Robert Hunter Middleton. Digitally engineered by Steve Jackaman and Ashley Muir from the Ludlow drawings, circa 1931–1942.

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Until recently the story of this type face ended with mediocre digital versions, which did not get at the root of its inspiration. Our pursuit of this paramount body type face of the 20th century began in Nové Hrady Castle, the place where a part of the depository of old prints of the National Museum Library is kept, in the summer of 1999.

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URW Grotesk was designed exclusively for URW by Prof. Hermann Zapf in 1985. At the same time, Zapf designed URW Antiqua to go with URW Grotesk. At that time, we were working with a large German publishing house (Axel Springer) on type design solutions to replace certain of their newspaper fonts. Test pages of large German newspapers (e.g. Bildzeitung) were printed with URW Grotesk and URW Antiqua font families. For reasons not disclosed to us, the project was dropped and Springer never used URW Grotesk and URW Antiqua for that purpose.

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Has altogether 60 designs, because it was originally produced as a Multiple Master typeface. The entire big family is grouped into eighteen independent, smaller four-design families, of which the user may choose, for example, only two or three which suit him as regards colour and width. The somewhat confusing use of abbreviations to designate the individual designs is, nevertheless, simpler than giving them numbers or full names. The abbreviations denoting weights are as follows: L - Light, R - Regular, D - Demi; and those denoting widths are: XC - Extra Condensed, C - Condensed, M - Semi Condensed, E - Extended, XE - Extra Extended.

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Designed by Hans Eduard Meyer for the Stempel foundry in 1968, Syntax is based on both Renaissance minuscule writing and Roman lapidary capitals.

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Designer Hermann Zapf set out to create a typeface that was ideally suited to newspapers and other legibility applications. Melior is that typeface, released by the Stempel foundry in 1952.

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Where Modern is too fragile and Century too boring, Hercules comes with its elegant forms and, at the same time, with sufficient firmness to be usable for longer texts. In its heavy, bold designs it approaches Falstaff, while in the light ones it has some features which are taken over from Didot or from Modern. The text designs have been corrected for small sizes. The range of its use is, therefore, quite extensive - from dictionaries and technical literature through magazines to art posters and advertising materials.

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CA Zaracusa was designed as a CI font for a German Documentary Festival.

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Helvetica is one of the most famous and popular typefaces in the world. It lends an air of lucid efficiency to any typographic message with its clean, no-nonsense shapes. The original typeface was called Neue Haas Grotesk, and was designed in 1957 by Max Miedinger for the Haas’sche Schriftgiesserei (Haas Type Foundry) in Switzerland. In 1960 the name was changed to Helvetica (an adaptation of Helvetia, the Latin name for Switzerland).

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Linotype Univers is a completely reworked version of the original Univers typeface family designed by Adrian Frutiger in 1957. After a long process of painstakingly detailed revision, Frutiger and the design staff at Linotype completed this large joint project in 1997. All the existing weights were completely redrawn, with careful attention paid to making the proportions more consistent with each other and improving fine details such as curves and thick-to-thin stroke ratios. By following Frutiger’s original designs, the humanist character of the sans serif, Univers, now comes through more distinctly. The systemized numbering system has also been updated. With its sturdy, clean forms Linotype Univers can facilitate an expression of cool elegance and rational competence.

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This slab serif font of Adrian Frutiger is extremely legible and robust, making it suitable for most any use. Based on the forms of Univers, Serifa makes a harmonious and timeless impression.

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Designed by Wilhelm C. Pischner, Neuzeit-Grotesk first appeared in 1928 with the font foundry D. Stempel AG. In 1966, Neuzeit S was introduced by Linotype-Hell AG, intended for large bodies of text and predecessor of Siemens corporate design. Neuzeit S is timeless, combining strength of form and objectivity and legible even on inferior papers.

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This typeface, designed by Max Miedinger and other project members at the Haas’sche Schriftgiesserei, has become one of the most famous and popular typefaces in the world, thanks to the marketing strategy of Stempel and Linotype. It forms an integral part of many printers and operating systems. The original letterforms of Helvetica had to be modified for the Linotype system. Over the years, Helvetica was expanded to include many different weights, but these were not coordinated with each other.

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Univers was designed by Adrian Frutiger on Swiss principles for Charles Peignot at Deberny & Peignot.

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Designed by H.E. Meier for Stempel in 1968, this typeface was one of the first attempts to go beyond the Swiss sanserifs Folio, Univers and Helvetica by returning to the earlier humanist principles.

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Emil Rudolf Weiss was the first to add slabserifs to the sanserif forms pioneered by Erbar and Renner. He designed Memphis for Stempel in 1929, following Futura; details show the influence of the American typeface Litho Antique from 1910. Ludlow Karnak can be seen as a version of the same design.

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A twentieth century modern face commissioned by Stempel and designed by Hermann Zapf in 1952; it is based on his thoughts about the squared-off circle known as the super-ellipse. The type was originally intended as a newspaper text face by Linotype. Its popularity can be judged by the number of unauthorized copies encouraged by Linotype’s restrictive licensing policies.

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This typeface was initially released as Neue Haas Grotesk, and was designed in 1957 by Max Miedinger for the Haas’sche Schriftgiesserei (Haas Type Foundry) in Switzerland.

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