18 Facts About Akzidenz-Grotesk

Akzidenz-Grotesk is a sans-serif typeface family originally released by the Berthold Type Foundry of Berlin.

Akzidenz-Grotesk's design descends from a school of general-purpose sans-serifs cut in the nineteenth century.

The source of Akzidenz-Grotesk appears to be Berthold's 1897 purchase of the Bauer u Cie Type Foundry of Stuttgart ; Kupferschmid concludes that the design appears to be related to a shadowed sans-serif sold by the Bauer Foundry and reviewed in a printing journal in 1896.

Two design patents on Akzidenz-Grotesk were filed in April 1898, first on the 14th in Stuttgart by Bauer and then on the 28th in Berlin by Berthold, leading Reynolds to conclude that the design was executed in Stuttgart.

Light weight of Akzidenz-Grotesk was for many years branded separately as 'Royal-Grotesk'.

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Gunter Gerhard Lange, Berthold's post-war artistic director, who was considered effectively the curator of the Akzidenz-Grotesk design, said in a 2003 interview Akzidenz-Grotesk came from the Ferdinand Theinhardt type foundry, and this claim has been widely copied elsewhere.

Kupferschmid and Reynolds speculate that he was misled by Akzidenz-Grotesk appearing in a Theinhardt foundry specimen after Berthold had taken the company over.

Reynolds additionally points out that Theinhardt sold his foundry to Oskar Mammen and Robert and Emil Mosig in 1885, a decade before Akzidenz-Grotesk was released, and there is no evidence that he cut any further fonts for them after this year.

Akzidenz-Grotesk commissioned some custom uncial-style alternate characters to print his poetry.

Akzidenz-Grotesk was popular in this period although other typefaces such as Monotype Grotesque were used : a problem with use of Akzidenz-Grotesk up to the late 1950s was that it was only available in individual units of metal type for manual composition.

Metal type declined in use from the 1950s onwards, and Akzidenz-Grotesk was rereleased in versions for the new phototypesetting technology, including Berthold's own Diatype, and then digital technologies.

Contemporary versions of Akzidenz-Grotesk descend from a late-1950s project, directed by Lange at Berthold, to enlarge the typeface family.

Particular criticism of Akzidenz-Grotesk however, has often been that the regular weight has capitals that look unbalanced relative to the lower-case, as shown on the cover of Designing Programmes, which is problematic in extended text.

Akzidenz-Grotesk Book is a variant designed by Lange between 1969 and 1973.

Akzidenz-Grotesk Schoolbook is a 1983 variant of Akzidenz-Grotesk Buch designed by Lange.

Swiss digital type foundry Optimo has released an alternative digitisation of Akzidenz-Grotesk named "Theinhardt", which Spiekermann has praised as "the best" Akzidenz-Grotesk digitisation.

Besides use in Swiss-style poster design and in New York City transportation, Akzidenz-Grotesk is the corporate font of Arizona State University and the American Red Cross .

Japanese car manufacturer Nissan has used custom versions of Akzidenz-Grotesk supplied by Berthold as a corporate typeface, amongst other typefaces.