text on 'jobbing' fonts?

Ryan Maelhorn4 Aug 2012

Looking for info on how the sans serif came about in Germany. Everything up to and including Akzidenz. Yes I know technically the first sans' sprung up in the British Isles, but really it was in Germany where the idea started to take root. All I've been able to find out is that somehow it morphed out of the black-letter/fraktur model.

The mid to late 1800's was an incredibly fertile time for typeface development. It's a shame there is not more widely available info about it out there.

And what's with that term 'jobbing font,' anyway? Does the word 'job' have a different meaning in Germany? If a sign painter made an advertising sign in slab serif or 'brush script,' would he still not be completing a 'job' for someone?

Frode Bo Helland4 Aug 2012#

I think, in this context, “jobbing” means a reliable workhorse.

HVB4 Aug 2012#

I would imagine that Gropius' Bauhaus, with Herbert Bayer et al, had a major impact.

- Herb

Michel Boyer4 Aug 2012#

From the OED (online) Jobbing (adj)

1. That does odd jobs; employed by the job; employed in odd or occasional pieces of work. Freq. (esp. in later use) depreciatively implying reduced quality and a lack of commitment.

hrant4 Aug 2012#

The mid to late 1800's was an incredibly fertile time for typeface development.

You said it brother. For one thing they made better Italics than us. A must-read BTW is Ovink's "Nineteenth-century reactions against the didone type model" in Quærendo.

hhp

Michel Boyer4 Aug 2012#

I am not sure everyone has the same story, but here is one that looks interesting. It is in Russian but translating with Google may give you useful hints.

Bert Vanderveen4 Aug 2012#

Akzidenz is similar to the concept of ‘jobbing’, eg anything that comes along in the daily practice of a commercial printer. Look into the jargon of printing and you will be educated…

(Example: in Dutch that short line on a new page is called a ‘hoerenjong’ — whore’s kid. In English…)

Té Rowan5 Aug 2012#

@BV – It is so in the Nordic countries as well, just like bread-text instead of bodytext.

Captured from commoncrawl.org on 28 Apr 2015. original URL