TYPE DESIGN INFORMATION PAGE last updated on Mon Jan 20 08:26:27 EST 2025
FONT RECOGNITION VIA FONT MOOSE |
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Olle Eksell
Olle Eksell was born in 1918 in Kopparberg, Sweden. From 1930 to 1941, Olle studied illustration and graphic art in Stockholm under Hugo Steiner-Prag. He later worked at the Ervaco advertising agency in Sweden, where he met his future wife and life companion, Ruthel Eksell. In 1946, the newly married couple sailed with the Drottningholm ship to America to continue their studies at the Art Center College of Design in Los Angeles. He died in 2007. In 1962, he designed the typeface Eksell Display, which was revived in 2015 in digital form by Göran Söderström, who published four styles, including a stencil. His design work covered a broad range, but Eksell Display was the only complete typeface created by him. Eksell Display was discontinued in May 2018. Sophie Finch did another revival of Eksell Display in 2017. In 1973, he created Eksell Sans, which in turn was revived by Letters from Sweden (in 2021, as Eksell Sans). Göran Söderström writes: This striking display face seems to live in an alternate universe. A strange world merging science fiction and Wild West where avant-garde musicians put out hip jazz records. The iconic Swedish designer and illustrator approached typographic shapes with a visionary attitude. He came up with these wildly original letterforms in 1973 and designed the font he personally missed to prove he could master the craft. Taking cues from display faces of the seventies, Eksell constructed an alphabet out of straight lines and circle arcs. The letterforms are slightly reminiscent of Bob Newman's Zipper (Letraset, 1970) and Aldo Novarese's Sintex (VGC, 1972). Still, Eksell's daring design takes those concepts into entirely new territories. |
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Luc Devroye ⦿ School of Computer Science ⦿ McGill University Montreal, Canada H3A 2K6 ⦿ lucdevroye@gmail.com ⦿ https://luc.devroye.org ⦿ https://luc.devroye.org/fonts.html |