![]() It has been twenty years since the successful project. The company was afraid that if the information were to become public, the competition would quickly adapt the typeface improvements introduced by Nokia. In part, this was the goal of Nokia itself as the company didn't want to reveal its secret: in legibility tests Nokia Sans Wide beat both Verdana and Tahoma fonts that were at that time considered the best for small pixel sizes. However, typeface design isn't the first thing that comes to the mind when you think of Nokia. Nokia Font had an impact on the lives of billions of people and in terms of typography its success was a small revolution by itself. The Unsung Heroes of Finnish Typeface Designįor a while, a Finnish typeface was the most read one in the world. I found it fascinating that it's a mixture of history, technical knowledge, and lessons in brand management. ![]() I translated the article as I felt it's a story that should be shared beyond Finnish circles. It's all these factors that have impact on the story as well. Although it has a remote location, it has had major influence on a global scale through culture, design, and engineering. ![]() It's a small miracle the country even exists as an independent nation. As a country, it's geographically between the east and the west. The story mirrors the history of Finland. The original work was written from a Finnish perspective for a Finnish audience and I've added cultural context where needed to make it accessible beyond Finns. Typeoff have an excellent Blackletter resource page.This article has been translated from original work by Jussi Kapanen. I love typography has a nice article about Moyenage, a blackletter typeface for a modern age.Ĭreative Pro discusses Amador, a new blackletter font. If you’d like to lend a medieval look to your design, there are now a huge number of free blackletter fonts available to download. Other familiar sightings include newspaper nameplates where it may be considered the font lends gravitas to the publication.īlackletters have more recently become associated with beer labels, heavy metal bands, gangsta’ rap and oh, Disneyland. If you’ve received a certificate, diploma or degree there is a strong chance some or all of the text was set in Blackletter. Check out the Eye Magazine article on the meaning of type for more on this topic.Īs already mentioned, these typefaces are not easy to read in body text so they are best used for headings, logos, posters and signs. Some people associate all blackletters as Nazi fonts but this is clearly an uneducated view and wipes out several hundred years of the typefaces’ history. The Nazis continued to use Fraktur extensively until 1941 when it was replace with more readable fonts. In 1933 Hitler declared the new typography to be un-German and declared Fraktur to be “Volk”, i.e. In the 1920’s it was considered to be antiquated by German designers and publishers and fell out of favor and was replaced by the “New Typography” of sans serif typefaces. Germany continued to use Blackletters until the early twentieth century. For these reasons, in the 1500’s, blackletter became less popular for printing in many countries except Germany and the German speaking countries. Blackletters are difficult to read as body text and Roman and Italic faces were easier to print with movable type. While Gutenberg used blackletters for his bible and books, this signaled a new era in typefaces used for printing. Image Credit: Wikipedia (with small change by the author) It’s beyond the scope of this article to go into each one, but if you look at the letter “o” in the chart below you will see the difference. Over time a wide variety of different blackletters appeared, but four major families can be identified: Textura, Rotunda, Schwabacher and Fraktur. They evolved in Western Europe from the mid twelfth century. Blackletter typefaces are based on early manuscript lettering. This style of typeface is recognizable by its dramatic thin and thick strokes, and in some fonts, the elaborate swirls on the serifs. The Blackletter typeface (also sometimes referred to as Gothic, Fraktur or Old English) was used in the Guthenburg Bible, one of the first books printed in Europe.
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