Palatino is the name of an old-style serif typeface designed by Hermann Zapf, initially released in 1949 by the Stempel foundry and later by other companies, most notably the Mergenthaler Linotype Company.
Helvetica, also known by its original name Neue Haas Grotesk, is a widely used sans-serif typeface developed in 1957 by Swiss typeface designer Max Miedinger and Eduard Hoffmann.
Futura is a geometric sans-serif typeface designed by Paul Renner and released in 1927. It was designed as a contribution on the New Frankfurt-project. It is based on geometric shapes, especially the circle, similar in spirit to the Bauhaus design style of the period. It was developed as a typeface by the Bauer Type Foundry, in competition with Ludwig & Mayer's seminal Erbar typeface of 1926.
Univers is a large sans-serif typeface family designed by Adrian Frutiger and released by his employer Deberny & Peignot in 1957. Classified as a neo-grotesque sans-serif, one based on the model of nineteenth-century German typefaces such as Akzidenz-Grotesk, it was notable for its availability from the moment of its launch in a comprehensive range of weights and widths. The original marketing for Univers deliberately referenced the periodic table to emphasise its scope.
Gill Sans is a humanist sans-serif typeface designed by Eric Gill and released by the British branch of Monotype from 1928 onwards.
Impact is a sans-serif typeface in the industrial or grotesque style designed by Geoffrey Lee in 1965 and released by the Stephenson Blake foundry of Sheffield. It is well known for having been included in the core fonts for the Web package and distributed with Microsoft Windows since Windows 98. In the 2010s, it gained popularity for its use in image macros and other internet memes.
Akzidenz-Grotesk is a sans-serif typeface family originally released by the Berthold Type Foundry of Berlin. "Akzidenz" indicates its intended use as a typeface for commercial print runs such as publicity, tickets and forms, as opposed to fine printing, and "grotesque" was a standard name for sans-serif typefaces at the time.
Janson is the name given to a set of old-style serif typefaces from the Dutch Baroque period, and modern revivals from the twentieth century. Janson is a crisp, relatively high-contrast serif design, most popular for body text.
Albertus is a glyphic serif display typeface designed by Berthold Wolpe in the period 1932 to 1940 for the British branch of the printing company Monotype. Wolpe named the font after Albertus Magnus, the thirteenth-century German philosopher and theologian.
Kabel is a geometric sans-serif typeface that was designed by the German designer Rudolf Koch and released by the Klingspor foundry from 1927 onward.
DIN 1451 is a sans-serif typeface that is widely used for traffic, administrative and technical applications.
H. Berthold AG was one of the largest and most successful type foundries in the world for most of the modern typographic era, making the transition from foundry type to cold type successfully and only coming to dissolution in the digital type era.
In typography, Erbar or Erbar-Grotesk is a sans-serif typeface in the geometric style, one of the first designs of this kind released as type. Designer Jakob Erbar's aim was to design a printing type which would be free of all individual characteristics, possess thoroughly legible letter forms, and be a purely typographic creation. His conclusion was that this could only work if the type form was developed from a fundamental element, the circle. Erbar-Grotesk was developed in stages; Erbar wrote that he had originally sketched out the design in 1914 but had been prevented from working on it due to the war. The original version of Erbar was released in 1926, following Erbar's "Phosphor" titling capitals of 1922 which are very similar in design.
Britannic is a sans-serif typeface family that was sold in metal type by Stephenson Blake. It is a "modulated" or stressed sans-serif design, in which the vertical lines are clearly thicker than the horizontals. The Klingspor Museum reports that it was originally created by the Wagner & Schmidt foundry of Leipzig, Germany. In design it is intended for headings, advertisements and signs rather than continuous body text. Stephenson Blake advertised it as "just the right note for an advertising or display panel".
Venus or Venus-Grotesk is a sans-serif typeface family released by the Bauer Type Foundry of Frankfurt am Main, Germany from 1907 onwards. Released in a large range of styles, including condensed and extended weights, it was very popular in the early-to-mid twentieth century. It was exported to other countries, notably the United States, where it was distributed by Bauer Alphabets Inc, the U.S. branch of the firm.
URW Grotesk is a large sans-serif typeface family designed by Hermann Zapf for URW in the mid-1980s.
Permanent Headline is a bold, highly compressed sans-serif typeface in the neo-grotesque style. It was designed by Karlgeorg Hoefer for the type foundry Ludwig & Mayer in Frankfurt am Main. It was released from 1964 and later issued by a range of companies in phototypesetting and digital versions.
Méridien is a serif typeface designed by Adrian Frutiger and released by Deberny & Peignot in 1957 for its phototypesetting system.
Normal-Grotesk is a sans-serif typeface that was sold by the Haas Type Foundry of Basel and Münchenstein, Switzerland, and popular in Swiss graphic design towards the end of the metal type period in the mid-twentieth century.
Unica or Haas Unica is a neo-grotesque sans-serif typeface developed at Haas Type Foundry in the late 1970s and originally released in 1980. Initiated as a project that sought to combine the strengths of both Helvetica and Univers, it had the misfortune of being released for phototypesetting just as the technology was being made obsolete by desktop publishing, and subsequent corporate mergers and a copyright dispute kept a digital version off the market. In 2015, two digital revivals were released: one by the rights holders, and the other with the blessing of the team that originally developed it.
