How they made fonts in 1986

This video isn’t exactly new, but Karsten recommended it to me today, and I loved every second. It documents type design at Berthold, particularly the development of a Bodoni for photo-typesetting. Quite interesting to see is Günter Gerhard Lange and his large (all-female?) letter-drawing office. The dated graphics and music are an added plus. The narration is in German, but English-speakers might get a kick out of it anyway. Low on time? Skip through the first few minutes and jump to the real beef. For more GGL (in German) download this video podcast from Typo Berlin 1996.

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Published:: 04.04.08 / 10pm

Category:: Asides

About

Dan Reynolds is a typeface designer and typographic researcher in Berlin. TypeOff.™ – this blog – launched in 2004; it was founded by a collective of typography students in Offenbach, Germany. The members of this team have each moved on to better things, but the »Offenbach Typostammtisch« inaugurated by the group still meets monthly. Its dates and locations are listed on spatium’s website.

Most text here is currently set with a custom webfont forked from the font family that would eventualy become the Malabar typeface. Information about this webfont may be found here.