Sans: Neo-Grotesque

In 1983, D. Stempel AG redesigned the famous Helvetica typeface for the digital age, creating Neue Helvetica for Linotype: a self-contained font family. Today, this family consists of 51 different font weights. It’s original numbering system for the weight designations came from Adrian Frutiger’s numbering system for the Univers family. The basic font weight, “Neue Helvetica Roman”, is at the... Read More

FF Bau is a large workhorse family of sans serif typefaces drawn in the “Grotesk” genre. Christian Schwartz is its designer, working under the inspiration of Grotesk types cast by the Schelter & Giesecke foundry in Leipzig. Schelter & Giesecke sold these popular Grotesks for many decades; they were first introduced around 1880. When the Bauhaus moved nearby in Dessau in the mid-1920s, these... Read More

“Schulbuch” is German for “school book.” This series of small type families named after regions in Germany shows geographic nuance: FF Schulbuch Nord for northern Germany, FF Schulbuch Süd for southern Germany, and FF Schulbuch Bayern for the state of Bavaria. Each of the three includes Regular and Bold weights. The typefaces themselves were drawn by Just van Rossum. The letterforms are based... Read More

Basic Commercial is a font based on historical designs from the hot metal typeface era. It first appeared around 1900, and was created by type designers whose names have not been recorded but whose skills cannot be overlooked. This typeface's design has been popular among groups and movements as diverse as the Bauhaus, Dadaism, and the masters of Swiss/International-Style typography. It... Read More

Typefaces without serifs were known in nineteenth-century England as Grotesque (or Grotesk in German) because they seemed so unusual to most readers. Monotype Grotesque font is a straightforward 1926 design that is among the earliest sans serifs cut for hot-metal machine typesetting. Its simple, clean lines make it amenable for text use, and the condensed and extended versions are useful for... Read More

Folio® was designed by Konrad F. Bauer and Walter Baum, and released in several weights and widths by the Bauer Type Foundry from 1956 to 1963. This legible sans serif family was designed around the same time as Helvetica, and in many ways it is quite similar to Helvetica. There are some notable differences in certain characters, like the lowercase a, and the caps G and Q. The designers of... Read More