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ABOUT

Karl-Heinz Lange

Type designer (b. 1929, Wiesenkirch, d. 2010) at Typoart Dresden (former East Germany).

Karl-Heinz was enrolled in the Humanistic Gymnasium at Elbing from 1939 to 1945 and changed to the Wernigerode High School after his family had to flee to central Germany. From 1949 to 1951, Karl-Heinz Lange studied at the Werkkunstschule Halle, where one of his teachers was Professor Post. After 1951, he continued his studies at the Hochschule for Grafik und Buchkunst in Leipzig with an emphasis on book design. He received his diploma in 1955 with distinction based on his design of a hot metal typeface. From 1956 to 1961, Karl-Heinz Lange worked as a lecturer for Type and Commercial Graphics at the Hochschule für Angewandte Kunst in Magdeburg. From 1961 to 1963, he taught at the Hochschule für Grafik und Buchkunst in Leipzig, and finally as a freelance commercial designer in Magdeburg. From 1969 to 1976 he was Artistic Director at Henschelverlag, Berlin. From 1976 until 1994 he was Professor of Type and Typography at the Fachschule für Werbung und Gestaltung in Berlin. From 2005 to 2007 he taught at the Fachhochschule Magdeburg/Stendal.

Karl-Heinz Lange was awarded the second prize at the International Type Design Contest 1971 for a headline typeface, and, in 1984, at the XIth Biannual of Graphic Design in Brno, he won a silver medal for Publica. He created the telephone book typeface Minima and redesigned the Typoart Super Grotesk (Arno Drescher, 1930) as well as the newspaper typeface Magna (originally by Herbert Thannhaeuser). His fonts include:

• Publika: a sans typeface developed between 1981 and 1983---this must have been one of the last big East German typefaces.... It obtained a silver medal at the Bienale of Graphic Design Brno 1984.
• Primus (a 1962 workhorse family for the magazines in the DDR), Magna (a DDR magazine text typeface from 1968) and Typoart Super Grotesk. These metal typefaces were adapted for Phototype by Lange.
• Minima (1984): a narrow sans designed for the DDR's telephone directory. Revived by Ralph M. Unger in 2017 as Tablica.
• ViabellaT H Pro (2009-2016). From 2006 until 2009, Veronika Elsner and Günther Flake helped Lange with his new signage script typeface Viabella. Earlier, Elsner and Flake published Lange's Rotola (1985/2007). Viabella and Rotola were adjusted and finished after Lange's death by the type designer Björn Gogalla.
• At the end of his life, Lange had a fruitful cooperation with Primetype. His old typefaces were revived in 2009 with the help of Ole Schäfer as Publicala [PTL Publicala has 60 typefaces], Minimala [PTL Minimala is a family of 96 fonts from Primetype] and Superla [PTL Superla has 64 styles in the geometric/Futura genre]. The first two names refer, of course, to Publika and Minima.
• Rotula TH Pro (2016, Elsner & Flake). When first developed in 1985 at Typoart, Lange called this circle-themed psychedelic font Boutique. It was further developed by him from 2006 until 2009, and finally published by Elsner & Flake after his death in 2016.

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INTERNAL LINKS
Type designers ⦿ Type designers ⦿ German type scene ⦿ Photo and film type era ⦿ Very thin (hairline sans) typefaces ⦿ Telephone directory typefaces ⦿ Signage typefaces ⦿