Typophile

Looking for thorough info on design of Akzidenz Grotesk

Dixon Yamada

Trying to find out as much as I can on the original design of this great typeface. The original version from 1896, not any of the following versions. About all I can seem to find is that it may have been derived from Didot or Walbaum, that it was based on typical German 'jobbing' alphabets of the time, and of course that it was released by Berthold in 1896.

I would love to read a whole book about how this face came about and what went into it's design. Perhaps there simply isn't any detailed info available?

Indra Kupferschmid

There is a lot of info on AG on typophile already e.g. here http://typophile.com/node/17643 and its history is not as easy and linear as it seems. Complex enough to write a whole book about it. I wouldn’t say that it is derived from Didot or Walbaum – it shares the same proportions and form model, yes, but so do most of the antecedent sans-serifs.

Dixon Yamada

Thanks for the link. The more I learn the more questions I have, lol.

Captured from web.archive.org on 24 Jul 2012. view this capture