Here are two samples:

http://www.sanskritweb.net/temporary/phalanx1.jpg

http://www.sanskritweb.net/temporary/phalanx2.jpg

drawn from the DVD "Bleisatzschriften des 20. Jahrhunderts aus Deutschland" compiled by Hans Reichardt and available for 20 Euro here:

http://www.spatium-magazin.de/produkt-der-woche-schriftmuster-dvd-%C2%BB...

With much gentler flares, but:
http://new.myfonts.com/fonts/fontfont/ff-balance/

BTW, if Phalanx never had an italic -and you plan on making one- this
is a great opportunity to revive G&S's superb efforts towards creating
usable slanted-Roman faces. Here's one:

hhp

Thanks for the informative response.

FF Balance and even the specimen don't hold the same appeal for me as my original find. Perhaps I'll try use another font as a basis and keep the thickened terminals. Thank you very much for the posts though, much appreciated.

Hrant: Sorry if this is a silly question, I'm still quite new to this. What do you mean by "usable slanted-Roman faces"? Which Roman faces are unusable? Is there an article/page you could point me towards?

The typical Italic is closer to calligraphic forms than its associated Roman.
Most people think this is a good thing, but to me it's just a legacy hold-over
from less sophisticated times and makes no sense because an Italic is supposed
to assist the Roman convey the text, not raise its voice in song! :-)

So there's something called a slanted-Roman, which means an Italic that's
quite close to the Roman in character, but slanted (although not mechanically).
Around the turn of the century (the previous one :-) some French and German
foundries made amazing slanted-Roman fonts, but the world wars bombed them
into history. It's high time to bring them back. I try to do this in my own work,
and some others have done this sort of thing too.
http://typophile.com/node/59269

Typophile is infested with my opinions on this :-) so you might take the time
to do a search (just prefix your search with "site:typophile.com" on Google,
don't bother with the Typophile search box). Also, I gave a talk about this
at TypeCon-LA in 2010, but I don't have it in a distributable form (yet).

hhp

Ulli/Hrant: I'm off to St. Brides tomorrow afternoon to research Phalanx and the foundry Genzsch & Heyse. I really appreciated your comments; is there anything either of you are looking for from there? I'm happy to ask for a photocopy or two of a specific specimen ect.

Scan, not photocopy. :-)

hhp

BTW, here's a bona fide, fully usable, kick-aß slanted-Roman Italic:
www.ernestinefont.com

hhp

Hrant, am I missing something in the online Ernestine specimens? I don't see a slanted-roman italic. The italic has a few serifs in placed where they don't occur in a cursive construction, but the letter shapes are mostly conventional italic, not roman. Actually, base on your previous comments regarding italic slant, I would have thought you might be critical of how upright the Ernestine italic is.

I like it, by the way, and the Armenian too.

Sorry to be taking over this thread.
John, I'm glad you like it. And surprised about your assessment of the Italic! When you speak of «conventional Italic» letter shapes I assume you must be looking at things like the a and g? Which even in slanted-Roman italics are sometimes «switched over» to alternate structures, simply because the Roman ones tend not to work very well slanted (and, I guess, as an alternate means of differentiation). But if you look at the whole thing in terms of construction, they're interrupted (? not continuous) strokes, the curves are quite rigid, and rather than pen-reminiscent instrokes and outstrokes this one has flat serifs (ok, half ones) in the placement typical of a Roman; all characteristics that to me make it more of a slanted-Roman than a classic cursive-infused Italic. I'm curious to learn about alternate perspectives on this, also since I'm very much still learning to sort out concepts and terminology.

FWIW, this thread might be a better place to continue the discussion; on p.2 there are some investigations into what makes italic lettershapes more or less cursive: http://typophile.com/node/60506

To the original poster:
I've just checked the one Genzsch & Heyse specimen book I own, and found a page of Phalanx:

Caption:
Phalanx
Originalschnitt nach Entwurf von Hans Möhring, Leipzig, herausgegeben 1931 in 11 Graden von 6–60 Punkt. 1932 ergänzt durch die Halbfette Phalanx in 12 Graden von 6–60 Punkt.

This is from «50 der schönsten Schriften aus 100 Jahren Schaffen 1833–1933», Genzsch & Heyse Schriftgießerei A-G, Hamburg

I've scanned this at much higher resolution – if you'd like the file drop me an email (post at ninastoessinger dot com).

> http://typophile.com/node/60506

Guys, we need to have a talk...
What's with not telling me about this?! ;-)

I'll be continuing this super-valuable slanted-Roman discussion there (later today).

hhp

… all characteristics that to me make it more of a slanted-Roman than a classic cursive-infused Italic.

I agree with John, Nina.
IMO a “slanted roman” italic is just that — a skew applied to the roman (with some “correction” of stroke weights).
I addressed this issue in Sense and Sensibility:

Nick, would you mind moving (or at least copying) your post
to that other thread*? I don't mean to be a control freak, it
would just be nice to have all this good stuff in one place.

John, same thing I guess - sorry.

hhp

[Continued in the other thread.]