The type family FF Layout is intended to be used for planning complex layouts. It contains a block-letter, hand-written face FF Layout (4 weights: Regular, Bold, Italic, and Bold Italic), FF Oxmox (Regular and Bold) where all letters are replaced with either x, m, or o, and the “greeked” text FF Tramline that displays the text as solid grey lines. While the comic-like FF Layout can be used well any number of ways, the other fonts only really make sense for actual layout work.
To quote its designer Gerd Wippich, “With my family of fonts the graphic designer is able to reclaim a lost element of the design process, the layout stage.” In the past, magazine and newspaper designers often cut and pasted “blind” layouts in order to plan spreads and pages (macro-typography). Now this step is also possible on the computer, with all the advantages of DTP. Text delivered as ASCII can be set in either FF Oxmox or FF Tramline to give it approximately the right length and look so that the rest of the page can be laid out. In this way the work can be presented in-progress and be edited with ease. And, when it’s time to concentrate on the micro-typography, a click of the mouse changes the text to the correct letter type.
