TYPE DESIGN INFORMATION PAGE last updated on Fri Dec 13 00:42:30 EST 2024

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ABOUT

Team 77 [André Gürtler]

Born in 1936 in Basel, Switzerland's André managed the design office at Deberny&Peignot in the late fifties and early sixties. He taught production letter design at the Künstgewerberschule in Basel from 1965 onwards. He started Team 77 with Christian Mengelt and Erich Gschwind in order to make a correct grotesk improving over past grotesks, including Helvetica.

Gürtler's typefaces:

• Basilia (1978, Haassche Schriftgiesserei). This didone typeface family is available from URW and Linotype who has the date 2004 for its latest digital version.
• The slab serif Egyptian 505 (1966, VGC). First Prize in the 1966 VGC National Type Face Design Competition, developed in cooperation with his students. This became Egyptian 505 at Bitstream and Linotype.
• Media (1976, Bobst Graphic, with Chr. Mengelt and Erich Gschwind).
• Signa (1978, Bobst Graphic).
• LinoLetter (1978). A slab serif co-designed with Reinhard Haus. The digital version at Linotype is dated 1992. Adobe also sells this typeface.
• ITC Avant Garde Gothic (1971-1977). With Edward Benguiat, Tom Carnase, Christian Mengelt and Erich Gschwind. ITC Avant Garde Gothic is a font family based on the logo font used in the Avant Garde magazine. Herb Lubalin designed the logo and its companion headline typeface. Lubalin and Tom Carnase, a partner in Lubalin's design firm, worked together to make a full typeface. The condensed fonts were drawn by Ed Benguiat in 1974, and the obliques were designed by André Gürtler, Erich Gschwind and Christian Mengelt in 1977.
• Alpin Gothic (1974, Compugraphic, and Team77). This is Alternate Gothic No. 2 in the early Bitstream collection, and goes back to Morris Fuller Benton's typeface from 1903.
• Cyrillic Gothic (Compugraphic).
• Haas Unica (1980, Haas). Hrant Papazian writes: Unica is amazing. The only grot I like - although some people don't think it's a grot - which would explain my attraction! It avoids both the sterility of Univers and the... well, idiocy, of Helvetica. [...] art of it is Gurtler's mystique. Another is the amazing "rationalization" exercise Team 77 carried out in making it (elaborated just as amazingly in a small publication I have a copy of). I guess the main reason I can cling to is that it's not "naive". Most old grots (like Akzidenz) are like backwards villagers to me, and new grots (like FF Bau) are urbanites pretending to be villagers. In comparison, Unica is like an urbanite who has had to move in with his villager in-laws, but has decided to make the best of it. On the other hand, I suspect this is exactly why some people think Unica is not in fact a grot - it's a geo in grot's clothing. Stephen Coles writes: Scangraphics Digital Type Collection (which included Haas Unica) was purchased by Elsner + Flake in 2003, to which they added font-specific Euro and @ symbols in 2004. The revamped typeface was set to be sold by Scangraphic and its distributors, but Linotype is currently preventing the release, citing trademark violations. Although similarities to other typefaces often occur between foundries, it is rare that one finds typefaces that have been shelved indefinitely due to such resemblances. In truth, the real problem lies within a dispute over who owns the name Haas Unica, rather than any resemblance infringment. Haas Unica was commercially unavailable for a long period thanks to Linotype and Scangraphic. Linotype especially stood to lose a lot of Helvetica money if it ever appeared somewhere else. Michael Hernan digitized Unica Deux in 2006. And then finally, in 2014, Linotype itself released a digital version, Neue Haas Unica (by Toshi Omagari). PDF of Unica. The Ministry of Type calls it the ultimate archetypal sans serif face.
• Media77 (2015), published at Optimo, after an orih=ginal design for Bobst Graphic going back to 1974. They write: In 1974, the designers André Gürtler, Christian Mengelt and Erich Gschwind were commissioned by Bobst Graphic to draw a new text typeface specifically conceived for phototypesetting. Rather than a constraint, they considered that the technical parameters of the composing system could bring interesting typographic solutions detached from the usual historical classifications: not another historical replica, but the design of a contemporary typeface with a modern aesthetic. Media was originally released by Bobst Graphic in 1977 and immediately featured in the issue 8/9 of Typographische Monatsblätter. Forty years later, the redrawing of Media by Team 77 is extraordinarily sophisticated: very legible at small sizes and full of refined details at display sizes, Media77 proposes a unique asthetic for text and headlines..

Linotype link. FontShop link. Klingspor link.

EXTERNAL LINKS
Team 77
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INTERNAL LINKS
Type designers ⦿ Type designers ⦿ Type design in Switzerland ⦿ Photo and film type era ⦿ Cyrillic type design ⦿ Modern style [Bodoni, Didot, Walbaum, Thorowgood, Computer Modern, etc.] ⦿ Avant Garde typefaces ⦿ Commercial fonts (small outfits) ⦿