Dan Reynolds – VEB Typoart: Better fonts than you’d think

Before the Nazis came to power in Germany, the Saxon typefoundries J. G. Schelter & Giesecke and Schriftguss (Brüder Butter) had each developed broad libraries of exciting typefaces. To one extent or another, each company survived the Second World War – only to be expropriated by the Soviet Military Administration. The arbitrariness of Germany’s division into western and eastern zones left the subsequent German Democratic Republic with few sources for fonts and what remained of those expropriated foundries had to survive. They were combined into the state-owned VEB Typoart Dresden, reflecting a trend already unfolding across the Eastern Block. For instance, in Socialist Hungary, printers could only acquire fonts from the Első Magyar Betűöntöde, and, of course, Czechoslovakians had to rely on Grafotechna. Like in Prague, Typoart’s directors chose not to rely on the “capitalist” matrices still available from pre-war foundries. New typefaces were developed, and described as having the voice of a socialist future. Propaganda aside, many of these typefaces featured excellent design. Some have even been revived in the 21st century. All of them are still worth considering in the future, too.

Dan Reynolds writes copy about type and is a design historian with a focus on late-19th century typefounding. He teaches typography in the book studies program at the Johannes Gutenberg University in Mainz, Germany.

This public lecture in English will take place within the European Typographic Proofreader project. This project is co-financed with the state support of the Czech Technology Agency within the SIGMA Programme.

You can follow the Typofix project of Filip Blažek and Radek on Instagram.