TYPE DESIGN INFORMATION PAGE last updated on Thu Mar 14 10:59:46 EDT 2024

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FONT RECOGNITION VIA FONT MOOSE

LUC DEVROYE


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History of blackletter fonts

Birgit Stehno tells the story of black letter fonts. (1) Textura (written typeface developed in France in the 13th c.). (2) Rotunda, a "soothed" form of Textura, important in Southern Europe in the 15th c. (3) Humanistic Minuscule, written in Italy in the 15th century, and developing into the Antiqua typeface (4) At the end of the 1th century, Bastarda appears (more ornaments and curved strokes): the first printed books use Textura, Rotunda and Bastarda (5) Schwabacher appears around 1481, used in Martin Luther's bible; the umlauts are minuscule e's; until the 19th c. most books in Bavaria are in Schwabacher (5) The German emperor Maximilian (1493-1519) directed that a new typeface based on traditional 'German' fonts had to be created; thus, the Fraktur was designed by the calligrapher Leonhard Wagner; this type was adopted by the Renaissance artist Albrecht Dürer and by the reformation movement, and soon became popular all over Europe.

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History of blackletter fonts
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INTERNAL LINKS
Blackletter fonts ⦿ German type scene ⦿ Bastarda / Bâtarde / Schwabacher ⦿ Rotunda / Rundgotisch ⦿ Textura ⦿













Luc Devroye ⦿ School of Computer Science ⦿ McGill University Montreal, Canada H3A 2K6 ⦿ lucdevroye@gmail.com ⦿ http://luc.devroye.org ⦿ http://luc.devroye.org/fonts.html