German type designer, b. 1856, Hildesheim, d. 1926, Berlin. He settled in the 1890s in Berlin and founded Maschinenfabrik Heidenheim & Hoffmann. In 1895 he became head of H Berthold AG in Berlin. He designed Bloc (Berthold, 1908) [digitization and Cyrillization by Tafir Safayev, 1997; see also Block Berthold at BertholdTypes, and FB Hermes (1995, Matthew Butterick at Font Bureau); FB Hermes was extended by Butterick in 2010]. Bloc was similar to Hermes at Schriftguss and Woellmer. Bitstream's Gothic 821 (1990) is based on Bloc. The Softmaker version is called Boulder.

In 1901, he designed Herold Reklameschrift at Berthold (Berlin), an art nouveau advertising typeface developed until 1907 with schmal, fett and Kontur substyles. Digitizations of this:

• Vladimir Yefimov at Paratype digitized it in 1993 and included Cyrillic characters.
• Berthold's own Herold Reklameschrift BQ.
• Heraut AS (2003, Andreas Seidel) is based on Herold Reklameschrift.
• Herold (2008) by Tom Wallace (HiH). <
• Herman (SoftMaker).

He also designed Kaufhaus-Fraktur (1906, Berthold).

Books: Das Haus Berthold 1858-1921 (1921, Berlin) and Der Schriftgiesser (1927, Leipzig).

FontShop page. Klingspor link. FontShop link.

Oddity: The names Heinz Hoffmann and Hermann Hoffmann are used by two subcommunities. MyFonts, Font Bureau, etc. use Heinz, while Erik Spiekermann, Klingspor, and German media use Hermann.

EXTERNAL LINKS
Hermann Hoffmann
 [Designer info]
Google search page

INTERNAL LINKS
Cyrillic type design ⦿ Type designers ⦿ Type designers ⦿ German type scene ⦿ Art Nouveau typefaces ⦿ Blackletter fonts ⦿ Books on type design ⦿

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