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ABOUT

Max Caflisch

Swiss type designer and calligrapher, born in Winterthur in 1916. He died in 2004. Designer of Columna (Bauersche Giesserei, 1952-1955, originally a private typeface of the Benteli publishing house in Switzerland; revived in 2006 by Ari Rafaeli, and in 2011 by URW), a slightly-serifed roman capitals face. His teachers included Jan Tschichold and Imre Reiner. Trained as a compositor (1932-1936), het set some jobs from 1936-1943. In 1941-1942, he taught typography at the Allgemeine Gewerbeschule in Basle, and was art director of the Benteli printing works in Bern from 1943-1962. From 1962 until 1981, he was head of the graphics department and typography teacher at the Kunstgewerbeschule in Zürich He consulted on type design for IBM in New York from 1962-1966, for the Bauersche Gießerei in Frankfurt am Main from 1965-1966, and for the Dr. Rudolf Hell company in Kiel from 1972-1989. He worked as type consultant at Adobe since from 1990. Adobe published Caflisch Script (designed by Robert Slimbach). Columna is available from Elsner&Flake (as ColumnaEF), Linotype and URW. Linotype bio.

Max Caflisch, Albert Kapr, Antonia Weiss and Hans Peter Willberg published F.H.Ernst Schneidler Schriftentwerfer, Lehrer, Kalligraph (SchumacherGebler a.o., München, 2002). This publication was thoroughly mangled by SchumacherGebler, to the dismay of Caflisch. This story was written up in "Die Chronologie der Schneidler-Monographie 1985-2002: Die 16 Jahredauernde, mühselige Entstehungsgeschichte" (Max Caflisch, 2002, Theo Leuthold Press). Other publications include: "William Morris, der Erneuerer der Buchkunst", Bern 1959; "Kleines Spiel mit Ornamenten", Angelus-Druck, Bern, 1965; "Fakten zur Schriftgeschichte", Zürich, 1973; "Schrift und Papier", Grellingen 1973; "Typography braucht Schrift", Kiel 1978; "Die Schriften von Renner, Tschichold und Trump. Aus Rede und Diskussion", Typographische Gesellschaft, 1990; Schriftanalysen, Band 1 + 2, St. Gallen 2003. Also see the book by A. Berlincourt et al: "Max Caflisch. Typographia practica", Hamburg 1988.

MyFonts page. Rudolf Bosshard's article about Caflisch's life (Comedia, 2004, vol. 2). Linotype link.

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