FF Kipp was designed by Claudia Kipp who studied in Bielefeld, Germany. The typeface was initially part of her university thesis, based on a wood type alphabet from the 1930s she discovered in Leipzig. After digitizing the design, she went back to add special optical effects to convey the historical sense associated with printing from woodblock typefaces. The face has been broken into levels of apparent distress or bad inking, which may be used separately, together in a modular way, or layered. FF Kipp No 1 is the primary style and No 3 is the basic distressed style. FF Kipp No 2 and No 4 are reversed versions of No 1 and No 3 respectively. FF Kipp No 5 and No 6 include half-inked elements that can be added used for chromatic layering. FF Kipp No 7 contains only character width information. If you set a word in Kipp No 1 or 3, and wish to selectively add distress elements, make a duplicate text box exactly overlaid on the original word and change the typeface to either Kipp No 5 or No 6, or a combination. For characters that you do not wish to change, select Kipp No 7 (in the overlay box) and no changes will effect that character. You can then apply colors, screens and so on to the basic text or the overlay box to achieve a wide variety of visual effects.
