It was defined by the German standards body DIN (Deutsches Institut für Normung, 'German Institute for Standardisation', pronounced like the English word din) in the standard sheet DIN 1451-Schriften ('typefaces') in 1931.[2] Similar standards existed for stencilled letters.[3]
Originally designed for industrial uses, the first DIN-type fonts were a simplified design that could be applied with limited technical difficulty. Due to the design's legibility and uncomplicated, unadorned design, it has become popular for general purpose use in signage and display adaptations. Many adaptations and expansions of the original design have been released digitally.[4][5]
Overview
Early DIN-Fette Engschrift specimen. Fette Engschrift is a single weight of the DIN 1451 typeface.
The DIN 1451 typeface family includes both a medium (Mittelschrift) and a condensed (Engschrift) version; an older extended version (Breitschrift) has not been used since the early 1980s, but may still be encountered on older road signs in Germany. DIN 1451 is the typeface used on road signage in Germany and a number of other countries. It was also used on German car number plates from 1956 until January 1995, when it was replaced by FE-Schrift, a typeface that impedes tampering and aids optical character recognition for automatic number-plate recognition.
DIN 1451 has gained popularity due to its wide exposure through its release as a PostScript typeface in 1990. Since then, it is also used by non-governmental organisations and businesses. For graphic design and desktop publishing, several type foundries offer redesigned and extended versions of this typeface.
History
German road signs using both the DIN 1451 Mittelschrift (left) and Engschrift (right) typefacesSpeed limit sign using this typeface
In 1931, the DIN institute published DIN 1451. It contained several standard typefaces for mechanically engraved lettering, hand-lettering, lettering stencils and printing types. These were to be used in the areas of signage, traffic signs, wayfinding, lettering on technical drawings and technical documentation.
The origins of DIN 1451 Engschrift ('condensed face') for hand lettering date back to 1905, when the Prussian state railways prescribed a standardized lettering style for use on all of its rolling stock. This specification was published in a document known as Musterzeichnung ('master template', literally: 'pattern drawing') IV 44. Ten years later, the company – by then, renamed Prussian-Hessian Railways – additionally required that signage lettering on railway platforms and station premises also be rendered according to the 1905 master template. Then, as a byproduct of the 1920 consolidation of all German railway companies into the Deutsche Reichsbahn, the Prussian railway's typeface quickly became a de facto national standard, even before the DIN Committee of Typefaces took up its work on DIN 1451 a few years later. The DIN Committee of Typefaces was headed by the Siemens engineer, Ludwig Goller (1884–1964), who also led the central standardization office at Siemens & Halske in Berlin, between 1920 and 1945.
Signs at the town of Eisingen in Engschrift, Mittelschrift and Breitschrift
The design included not only the DIN Engschrift, but also a DIN Mittelschrift ('medium[-width] face' – now very popular). A DIN Breitschrift ('extended face') design was also included, but it has never been widely used.
In order to enable quick and easy reproduction, all drawings were originally based on a coarse grid and could be executed with compass and rulers. The Normblatt ('standards sheet') DIN 1451, Schriften ('typefaces') was released preliminarily in 1931; then, with some minor changes in 1936, it was released as an official standard. In 1938, Temporary Order No. 20 required DIN 1451 to be used on the new German Autobahn (motorway) system. Due to this and similar regulations, DIN 1451 still dominates German public lettering today.
Stencilled and DIN-style lettering on a street sign in Steinlah, a district of Haverlah
In 1923, Stempel was the first type foundry to produce printing type according to a DIN Standard. The design follows DIN 16, an earlier standard for oblique lettering on technical drawings, which had been released in 1919. In 1929, the Berthold Type Foundry released a similar typeface. DIN 16 had also been made available as lettering templates engraved in celluloid material for drafting use by the Filler and Fiebig company in Berlin.
Stencils for lettering technical drawings to DIN standards
Within the scope of public and technical lettering, the use of the DIN 1451 typefaces spread rapidly once they were adopted. They were released as celluloid lettering stencils for smaller applications, as larger metal stencils for application to machinery, vehicles and airplanes, and as cast metal lettering for street and building signage; nevertheless, printing type conforming to DIN 1451 have never been produced. During World War II, DIN 1451 was also adopted in the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia. The 1943 version of DIN 1451 added a set of Cyrillic characters, although their design did not match the weight and proportions of DIN Mittelschrift.
Sans-serif lettering and typefaces styled around geometric shapes, along with Art Deco in general, was very popular in the 1920s and 1930s. At the Bauhaus, the use of coarse grids for designing typefaces was advocated by Herbert Bayer and Joost Schmidt during the Dessau period. Although of a similar design, the DIN typefaces did not incorporate the elegance of this stylistic trend.
Inspired by the DIN standard, a consortium of Dutch organisations created an equivalent lettering standard, NEN 3225.[6] Created by a group of designers that included Jan van Krimpen, the design has no similarity to the DIN standard: it is a humanist family with serif and sans-serif styles. The sans-serif is similar to Gill Sans and to Johnston; the serif reflects the classical Renaissance humanist model.[7] In a similar vein, the International Standards Organisation developed its own derivative, Isonorm, in 1980.[8]
Releases
A sign in an older version of DIN Mittelschrift. Note the different structure of the 'a' and how curved strokes do not thin as they connect, as at the join of the 'h'.
The transferable-lettering-sheet company, Letraset made several variants available in the 1970s. Also, the Berthold type foundry adopted the DIN typefaces for their optomechanical phototype setting systems such as Staromat. In 1980, the DIN typefaces were redrawn by Adolf Gropp (1911–1996), a lettering artist from Frankfurt. The drawings were made on a finer grid. This enabled an exact definition of details such as the amount of overshoot of round characters (e.g. C, G and O) below the baseline and above the cap height. Also, characters such as S for which an accurate construction drawing had never been made were now defined using lines and arcs for the new cutting plotters that were to be used for the lettering on motorway signage. A number of the glyphs were changed, in particular those for "a", "6" and "9" as well as "t" in DIN Engschrift.
By the mid-1980s, Linotype adopted the redrawn DIN typefaces for digital photocomposition. Together with Adobe, they released it as DIN Mittelschrift and DIN Engschrift in 1990. Thus, the typefaces became part of the Adobe/Linotype PostScript typeface library. The use of DIN typefaces started to appear in the work of cutting edge graphic designers and design studios such as Uwe Loesch in Germany, Tel Design in the Netherlands, as well as David Carson and April Greiman in the USA. Soon, other leading designers began using DIN Mittelschrift and Engschrift, making it a popular option to other sans serif faces.
Third-party adaptations
Albert-Jan Pool, author of one of the most famous adaptations of DIN, FF DIN, speaking about the design's history
With the popularity of the DIN fonts, with their minimal, modern design, several designers and companies have released their own interpretations and adaptations, often adding new weights such as light or extra-bold, and italics, causing a range of digital interpretations to exist.
As the original DIN design is out of copyright, other companies have offered digital releases (or obtained rights to resell Linotype's). Parachute (Latin, Arabic, Cyrillic, Greek), Elsner+Flake, Paratype (with Cyrillic characters) and others have issued revivals of some DIN styles, often upgraded with additional weights.[19] Fontsite renamed its release Fette 1451.[20]
Samples of various versions of lettering of DIN and related styles in digital format, mostly by Peter Wiegel
An extensive set of digitisations is that made by Peter Wiegel with donations requested from users under the OFL. This includes the regular style (Mittelschrift) in two grades for printing with less and more ink spread, and the less well-known Breitschrift.[21][22][23] He also digitised the rounded DIN 16 Oblique and DIN 17 Upright Standard Typeface for Drawings using the names TGL 0-16 and 0-17, the names under which they were known in the German Democratic Republic.[24][25][26][27] Peter Wiegel also digitised a precursor of DIN 1451 typeface named Preussische IV 44 Ausgabe 3 typeface.[28]
Microsoft created custom digitizations of both Mittelschrift and Engschrift versions of DIN 1451 in 2013, but this version was never released publicly. In 2016, a version was released as Bahnschrift, as Microsoft's first ever Open Typevariable font.[29] The Bahnschrift source was completely rebuilt from the ground up by Aaron Bell of Saja Typeworks and was expanded in weight, character set and manual hinting.[30] It supports Latin, Cyrillic, Greek, currency symbols, and some Coptic. It was first included in Windows 10 version 1709, and is primarily being used as the user interface font for Xbox software.[31][32]
Parachute Type Foundry also designed the PF DIN Max Variable typeface, which also based on the DIN 1451 typeface.[33][34]
American cybersecurity and data backup company, Datto, Inc. used D-DIN, a typeface which also based on the DIN 1451 typeface as their corporate typeface.[35][36] The Sage Group enterprise software company have used a DIN-derived typeface in their logo since 1996.[37]
Emil Karl Bertell designed the Praktika typeface, inspired from the DIN 1451 typeface.[38]
Thomas Schostok designed the CA BND typeface, inspired from the DIN 1451 typeface.[39]
In 2023, the Berlin-based Type Foundry, Fontwerk released the Neue DIN typeface designed by Hendrik Weber, Andreas Frohloff and Olli Meier. Neue DIN is an interpretation of the DIN 1451 typeface and has an overall compact appearance with a range of extreme widths. It is variable first and provides 81 static fonts which correspond to W3C’s CSS specifications.[40]
Optima is a humanist sans-serif typeface designed by Hermann Zapf and released by the D. Stempel AG foundry, Frankfurt, West Germany in 1958.
In typography and lettering, a sans-serif, sans serif, gothic, or simply sans letterform is one that does not have extending features called "serifs" at the end of strokes. Sans-serif typefaces tend to have less stroke width variation than serif typefaces. They are often used to convey simplicity and modernity or minimalism. For the purposes of type classification, sans-serif designs are usually divided into these major groups: § Grotesque, § Neo-grotesque, § Geometric, § Humanist, and § Other or mixed.
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.
Frutiger is a series of typefaces named after its Swiss designer, Adrian Frutiger. Frutiger is a humanist sans-serif typeface, intended to be clear and highly legible at a distance or at small text sizes. A popular design worldwide, type designer Steve Matteson described its structure as "the best choice for legibility in pretty much any situation" at small text sizes, while Erik Spiekermann named it as "the best general typeface ever".
Gill Sans is a humanist sans-serif typeface designed by Eric Gill and released by the British branch of Monotype from 1928 onwards.
Adrian Johann Frutiger was a Swiss typeface designer who influenced the direction of type design in the second half of the 20th century. His career spanned the hot metal, phototypesetting and digital typesetting eras. Until his death, he lived in Bremgarten bei Bern.
William Addison Dwiggins, was an American type designer, calligrapher, and book designer. He attained prominence as an illustrator and commercial artist, and he brought to the designing of type and books some of the boldness that he displayed in his advertising work. His work can be described as ornamented and geometric, similar to the Art Moderne and Art Deco styles of the period, using Oriental influences and breaking from the more antiquarian styles of his colleagues and mentors Updike, Cleland and Goudy.
Lettering is an act or result of artfully drawing letters, instead of writing them simply. Lettering is considered an art form, where each letter in a phrase or quote acts as an illustration. Each letter is created with attention to detail and has a unique role within a composition. Lettering is created as an image, with letters that are meant to be used in a unique configuration. Lettering words do not always translate into alphabets that can later be used in a typeface, since they are created with a specific word in mind.
Oblique type is a form of type that slants slightly to the right, used for the same purposes as italic type. Unlike italic type, however, it does not use different glyph shapes; it uses the same glyphs as roman type, except slanted. Oblique and italic type are technical terms to distinguish between the two ways of creating slanted font styles; oblique designs may be labelled italic by companies selling fonts or by computer programs. Oblique designs may also be called slanted or sloped roman styles. Oblique fonts, as supplied by a font designer, may be simply slanted, but this is often not the case: many have slight corrections made to them to give curves more consistent widths, so they retain the proportions of counters and the thick-and-thin quality of strokes from the regular design.
In typography, a slab serif typeface is a type of serif typeface characterized by thick, block-like serifs. Serif terminals may be either blunt and angular (Rockwell), or rounded (Courier). Slab serifs were introduced in the early nineteenth century.
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.
Clarendon is the name of a slab serif typeface that was released in 1845 by Thorowgood and Co. of London, a letter foundry often known as the Fann Street Foundry. The original Clarendon design is credited to Robert Besley, a partner in the foundry, and was originally engraved by punchcutter Benjamin Fox, who may also have contributed to its design. Many copies, adaptations and revivals have been released, becoming almost an entire genre of type design.
Rotis is a typeface developed in 1988 by Otl Aicher, a German graphic designer and typographer. In Rotis, Aicher explores an attempt at maximum legibility through a highly unified yet varied typeface family that ranges from full serif, glyphic, and sans-serif. The four basic Rotis variants are:
FF Scala Sans is a humanist sans-serif typeface designed by Dutch designer Martin Majoor in 1993 for the Vredenburg Music Center in Utrecht, the Netherlands. It was designed as a companion to Majoor's earlier serif old style typeface FF Scala, designed in 1990.
Syntax comprises a family of fonts designed by Swiss typeface designer Hans Eduard Meier. Originally just a sans-serif font, it was extended with additional serif designs.
FF DIN is a sans-serif typeface in the industrial or "grotesque" style. It was designed in 1995 by Albert-Jan Pool, based on DIN-Mittelschrift and DIN-Engschrift, as defined in the German standard DIN 1451. DIN is an acronym for Deutsches Institut für Normung. It was published by FontShop in its FontFont library of typefaces.
Albert-Jan Pool is a Dutch type designer and educator.
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.
A display typeface is a typeface that is intended for use in display type at large sizes for titles, headings, pull quotes, and other eye-catching elements, rather than for extended passages of body text.
Parachute offers a variety of fonts designed to support Latin, Cyrillic, and Greek scripts, some of which have received recognition for their quality. Notable typefaces like PF Centro Pro, PF Champion Script Pro, and PF Goudy Initials Pro were introduced online in 2007.
References
↑ Pool, Albert-Jan (2007). "FF DIN, the history of a contemporary typeface". In Spiekermann, Erik; Middendorp, Jan (eds.). Made with FontFont: type for independent minds (1sted.). New York: Mark Batty Publisher. pp.66–73. ISBN978-0977985043.
↑ Jan-Pool, Albert. "Funktionale Serifen?". Design Made In Germany (in German). Archived from the original on 6 February 2013. Retrieved 13 February 2017.
The series of articles "The history of the design of a contemporary typeface" in which Albert-Jan Pool published many of his findings on the history of the typefaces of DIN 1451 is a vault of references on this subject. The series was published in the e-magazine 'Encore', issues 13–15, 17–18. These are direct links to the article which were reprinted in modified form in Made with FontFont
Blackwell, Lewis. 20th Century Type. Yale University Press: 2004. ISBN0-300-10073-6.
Friedl, Friedrich, Nicholas Ott and Bernard Stein. Typography: An Encyclopedic Survey of Type Design and Techniques Through History. Black Dog & Leventhal: 1998. ISBN1-57912-023-7.
Jaspert, W. Pincus, W. Turner Berry and A.F. Johnson. The Encyclopædia of Type Faces. Blandford Press Lts.: 1953, 1983. ISBN0-7137-1347-X.
Macmillan, Neil. An A–Z of Type Designers. Yale University Press: 2006. ISBN0-300-11151-7.
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