The corporate design of the Hochschule für Bildende Künste Dresden (HfBK, University of Arts Dresden) was designed by Roger Lehner and Arne Winter. It is based on a custom version of Futter Grotesk by David Raphael Lüthi, Upset.

The new visual identity of the art school aims to strengthen the institution’s recognition and visibility while maintaining the openness needed to represent its diverse perspectives and positions. The design must be easy to apply in daily use and convey a professional, institution-appropriate appearance.

To achieve this, the identity is based on a few clear, flexible rules that are simple to implement yet allow for creative freedom. The result is a cohesive design framework under which the university’s various roles and actors can come together.

The system is built from modular elements. The only mandatory component is the combination of the three freely arranged logo elements with the wordmark. Other components, such as the grid, are optional. Each element is designed to simplify everyday communication tasks without limiting creative expression when desired.

The Museen der Stadt Dresden utilize the TT Firs Neue typeface as a key component of their visual identity.

The Museen der Stadt Dresden is a municipal museum association established in 2005, comprising ten institutions dedicated to preserving and presenting Dresden’s rich cultural heritage. These museums cover a diverse range of topics, including history, art, technology, and literature. Notable members include the Dresden City Museum, the City Art Gallery, the Technical Collections, and the Carl Maria von Weber Museum.​

The association operates under the City of Dresden's Department of Culture and Tourism, aiming to showcase diversity and provide educational experiences. Its mission focuses on engaging the public with Dresden's multifaceted history and culture.

The Swiss version of the Ackerflora species guide uses the typeface Cast. Originally developed for the Sächsisches Landesamt für Umwelt, Landwirtschaft und Geologie (LfULG) in Germany, the guide has been adapted for Switzerland by Jessica Käser of Wildform, on behalf of the publisher, Verein Hot Spots.

This species guide provides essential information for identifying selected field species in a compact, user-friendly format. The species are organized alphabetically by flower color and their German names for easy reference.

Cast’s narrow character width and outstanding legibility, even at small sizes, made it an ideal choice, perfectly complementing the guide’s goal of clarity and accessibility.

1919 edition, featuring Nero (Schriftguss, before 1914), a typeface also sold by various other foundries. Poppelbaum in Vienna had it under the name Block.

Erwin Le Mang’s Hypnosis and Suggestion offers “a course through the whole field of hypnotism”, in “12 teaching letters for self-study”. The booklet was printed in a number of editions, many of which show distinct cover designs. The general layout is similar: the title is set in all caps, stacked and justified, with the word “und” framed by lines or ornaments; and the whole text block is enclosed in decorative border elements. The fonts in use are different for each of the designs.

1921 edition featuring Neue Römische Antiqua halbfett, a wider variant of Grimm-Antiqua (Klinkhardt, c.1908)

1922 edition, featuring Messe-Grotesk (AG für Schriftgießerei u. M., 1921) and Clio (Ludwig Wagner, c.1904)

Radium mager and fett on the case of a pack of playing cards, advertising the Revue brand of cigarettes by Sulima.

According to Cigabox.de, Tabak- und Cigarettenfabrik Sulima F.L. Wolff GmbH was established in Dresden, Germany, in 1871. It was acquired by Jasmatzi AG before 1914, which in turn was taken over by Reemtsma in 1925. Sulima was still doing business under that name in 1924.

The secondary typefaces, a compressed grotesk and a Romanisch-like roman, are shown with too little detail to identify them reliably.

See also this invoice from 1924 for another example of both weights of Radium used together.

The cards were produced by a division of the Vereinigte Stralsunder Spielkarten-Fabriken Act.-Ges. in Altenburg, Sachsen-Anhalt.

Prater Garten is a large beer garden and restaurant in the previous center of East Berlin (Mitte). Their identity was designed in the early 1990s by renowned illustrator, designer and lettering artist Henning Wagenbreth. Having been a student in East Germany before the wall came down, he mastered a precise but also very personal lettering style. When the FontFont (FF) type library was started up in Berlin, he and Steffen Sauerteig (member of the three-men collective eBoy) digitized the various lettering styles of the Prater identity, and called it … FF Prater!

This Kurier was the newspaper and event calendar of the Puppentheater (puppet theatre) of the city of Dresden. This 8-page issue is from 1997. The design, with all texts and headlines in FF Prater Sans and FF Prater Serif, was made by the designers of the typeface: Wagenbreth and the eBoy group.

“The Modern Road to Marriage” is “a guide to marital bliss”, with “reflections, tips, and advice on life’s most important question”. Written by Richard Jus, it was published by Rudolphsche Verlagsbuchhandlung Dresden in 1919. The cover typeface is similar to Berthold’s Block, but is distinguished by rounder terminals. It was sold under the name Block by the Poppelbaum foundry in Vienna and also went under various other names. Schriftguss in Dresden had this typeface, too, as Nero.

The marriage advertisement is shown on an angle, complete with borders and shadow. This wasn’t trivial to accomplish with metal type: the element had to be locked up in the rectangular forme by using angled furniture. The ad copy is set in Kleukens-Antiqua.

Following an extensive renovation, the 700 works of art at Dresden’s world famous Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister have been housed in the Semper Building. The permanent exhibition is arranged according to geographical schools and epochs, while considered accent lighting and coloured wall covering give the works a new radiance. Orientation is provided by the wayfinding and information system developed by Studio Gourdin in collaboration with the Berlin studio Capitale.

Their sculptural wall lettering fits into the architecture functionally and stylistically without historicizing it. Instead, it reflects the high reputation of the picture gallery. Letters, floor plans, arrows and pictograms are 10 mm deep and pick up the colour of the wall. The visible surface is made of 2 mm thin brushed brass, a nod to the color and materials of the surrounding architectural elements.

The typeface — an early version of West – was designed by Daniel Perraudin especially for this project, which started back in 2013. Stylistically, he opted for a geometric sans with classic proportions, whose individuality is thanks to a clever magic formula: There is no repetition of visually similar shapes in the letters.

In the museum, capital letters are used almost exclusively, center justified, which corresponds to the typographical conventions of the Baroque period. A real eye-catcher are the oversized floor figures in Hairline: unmissable and yet restrained.

Before publishing under the name West, Perraudin expanded and developed the family enormously. The three original styles became nine (from Hairline to Black), in addition lowercase letters and special characters were added (in total 750 glyphs per font) as well as italics. And so, the West family consists of 18 luxuriously equipped styles, including arrows, ligatures, wonderful alternative forms (for example the uppercase Q); it also includes pictograms for wayfinding systems.

Ad for Theophil Müller’s “Workshops for German household goods” from 1906, set in Behrens-Schrift. The firm in Dresden claimed to “manufacture good and cheap household items, individual pieces of furniture, and entire home furnishings, based on designs by outstanding artists and with the constant collaboration of Gertrud Kleinhempel and Margarete Junge.”

Together with her fellow student Margarete Junge, Gertrud Kleinhempel (1875–1948) designed the first pieces of furniture for the newly founded Dresdner Werkstätten für Handwerkskunst, later known as Deutsche Werkstätten Hellerau. As early as 1902 she left the Deutsche Werkstätten and started working for Müller’s rival company. From 1907 to 1938 she was the head of the textile class at the Bielefeld School of Crafts and Applied Arts, and a charter member of the Deutscher Werkbund in 1907. In 1921, Kleinhempel was appointed the first female professor in Prussia.

Margarete Junge (1874–1966) took part in a number of arts and crafts exhibitions, including the 1904 World’s Fair in St. Louis, USA. She likewise was one of the first artists to become a member of the Werkbund in 1908. Her teaching career began in 1907 at the Dresden School of Applied Arts. In 1915, Junge was appointed the first female professor at the Royal Saxon School of Applied Arts in Dresden. She was removed from office by the Nazis in 1934.

Behrens-Schrift was designed by Peter Behrens, another founding member of the Werkbund, and released by the Rudhard’sche Gießerei (from 1906 known as Klingspor) in 1901. It’s here used in five different sizes, featuring the long s (ſ) and ligatures for the ch pair. Names are emphasized by the use of letterspacing (Theophil Müller) and all caps (Gertrud Kleinhempel, Margarete Junge).

Detail.

This leaflet from the 1930s shows various products by the Georgii Elektro-Motoren-Apparatebau-Aktiengesellschaft from Stuttgart, Germany. Founded in 1924, the company started to manufacture electric motors for the use in sewing machines in 1926. The Kobold in the name probably refers to the small size of their motors. As of 2020, Georgii Kobold is still in the same business.

The typography uses three (or four?) weights of a typeface family known as Neue moderne Grotesk or Aurora-Gotesk, among many other names. They are paired with the compressed style from the same series, which goes by the names of Neue moderne Grotesk eng, lnserat-Grotesk schmal, or Aurora-Grotesk schmalhalbfett VIII. While the compressed has been available in digital form from Bitstream as Aurora Condensed since the early 1990s, an accurate digitization of the regular-wide styles was released only in 2020, as Neue moderne Grotesk FSL by Forgotten Shapes.

From Jim Cooper:

A Dresden postcard from 1969. At top right is the first block of flats to be built on the new Prager Strasse. Hbf [main station] in the background.

The typeface is Amalthea with an initial swash cap. Amalthea was designed as an italic companion to Schneidler-Mediäval and first cast by the Bauer foundry in 1956, with a full set of alternate swash caps. There are various digitizations, under the original name and as italic style in the families named Schneidler or Stempel Schneidler. The only digitizations to include the swash caps are no longer available.

Under the keyword #disconnect, DGTL FMNSM investigates the social and cultural conditions of radical digitization - in performative and participatory arrangements between music, performance, activism and science. The audience is invited to linger and experience the theme in various dimensions, states of aggregation, art forms and formats.

Anja Kaiser plays with the slant contrast between Roman and Script styles, Millionaire’s shapes combine harmoniously with the geometric graphic composition and pop button-like elements. Further information is set in Gräbenbach.

Life-size marionettes, graphic art and collages, fantastical hybrid creatures, ceramics, surrealist paintings, taxidermy, obscure fetishes and relics, cinemas and stages – the universe of Czech surrealists Jan and Eva Švankmajer seems never-ending.

The exhibition Move little hands... “Move!” at Kunsthalle im Lipsiusbau is giving an insight into the artistic couple’s lives and work. It presents contemporary Czech surrealism through a wide variety of media, uniting the oeuvres of both artists in one place.

Serious Play was commissioned by the State Art Collection Dresden to create the visual communication to promote the exhibition. Building upon the exhibition title and Svankmajer’s typography used in their films we presented two routes. Of the four posters shown in this post, the second pair was realized. Staying true to the legacy of Czech type designers and their disctinctive typography we decided to use BC Baseliner by Šimon Matějka and Tyfa Antikva by Josef Týfa for a bold and contrasting look.

Corundum Text and SSD Headline are the two typefaces used for the visual identity of the Staatsschauspiel Dresden (State Playhouse Dresden) in Saxony, Germany.

Following the stated key concepts of diversity and courage, the custom headline face – a bold angular sans serif – is used whenever a loud, attention-grabbing voice is needed. Darden Studio’s Corundum Text acts as a calmer, sophisticated counterbalance. The Fournier-inspired text face ensures that all continuous text looks shapely and classy, and is pleasantly readable.

The identity was developed by Strichpunkt in 2017, and won them prizes in the iF Design Award and DDC’s Good Design Competition. It has been continued since in-house, by Andrea Dextor and others.

While all display type is set in the custom SSD Headline, Corundum Text is entrusted with handling the running text.

Page from the booklet for the 2019/2020 season. Design by Fabian Glass/PlusMinusZwei.

Detail: The Book weight of Corundum Text is used for the main column and the marginal text, with the default oldstyle figures and small caps for titles. The introductory quote features Corundum’s italics. Names are emphasized by the use of the SemiBold.

Detail: Corundum Text in interplay with SSD Headline. Other recurring elements of the identity include speech bubbles and the use of yellow and black, which are the colors of the City of Dresden.

The fifth issue of Plasma magazine features Tiny (Velvetyne) and ABC Whyte (Dinamo). From the Present Books website:

PLASMA 5 – 224 pages jam-packed with interviews, stories, behind the scene sneak peaks, photo series, posters, nerd guides, and all things science & art! Scientists from different fields, from Berlin to LA, all talking about their personal motivations and passions. A Berlin special introduces us to the diverse research areas this city is host to. Everything from the exploration of Mars to the creation of humanoid robots. From there we jump across the Atlantic to explore all the latest nerd hot spots in NYC, learn about the latest advancements in space exploration from NASA, and so much more!

We were invited by the Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden (Dresden State Art Collection) to develop the exhibition campaign material for the re-opening of two permanent exhibtions showcasing baroque chambers and objects.

The exhibition title Starke Stücke (“Strong Pieces”) references Augustus II the Strong (1670–1733), remembered as a patron of the arts and a collector of paintings now on display in the Old Masters Gallery.

Our design proposal combines several weights and widths of Sharp Grotesk. It eventually wasn’t selected by the client and remained unrealized. Watch the animated poster.

This East German schoolbook series is more proof that typefaces from Western manufacturers like Letraset (UK), Mecanorma (France) or Berthold Fototypes (West Germany) somehow crossed the Iron Curtain and were very well put to use in the GDR, too. You couldn’t buy Letraset sheets in a shop (only the local equivalents like Typofix), but inventive designers found ways to get their hands on the latest developments in display type from the capitalist world.

The covers of these scientific reference books combine two faces that were available from Letraset. The neon-like Oxford with linked lowercase letters was designed by Christine Lord in 1969 and originally released as film type by Face Photosetting. Shortly after (and definitely before 1973), Letraset had added it to their range of faces for dry-transfer lettering. The second one, Gill Kayo Condensed, is a Letraset “exclusive”. It was devised at their London Studio in 1980, based on Eric Gill’s original design from the 1930s.

Wolfgang Lorenz designed the covers and the typography at Atelier vwv (Volk und Wissen Verlag). The books were typeset and printed at Grafischer Großbetrieb Völkerfreundschaft Dresden. Based on the information provided by book sellers, there were several editions, in 1982 (2nd), 1986 (4th), 1988, and – after the reunification – in 1991. The interior (not pictured) of the earlier editions is set in Monotype Gill 8pt, namely the variant with Futura-like shapes for many letters that was popular especially in Germany. It was later replaced by Univers. Oxford also appears rotated on the contents pages.

Spurred by a font ID request posted on the German Typografie.info, forum member Peter Wiegel started another digital interpretation of Oxford, currently in progress and dubbed Tafelwerk. It’s distinguished from previous attempts by the addition of Cyrillic characters.

Li-iL was established in 1910 as manufacturer of medical baths. In 2013, their Dresdner Essenz® cosmetic brand received an all-embracing overhaul by kakoii, featuring a versatile and fresh typographic palette.

The new logo is in Julia Sysmäläinen’s FF Mister K Informal (2011), with customized capitals and some extra stroke weight. Products from the bathing and body care segments use the narrow caps of Neubau Grotesque (2009, with round-top ‘M’ and ‘N’). The package designs of health products and sauna oils combine the more conservative seriffed ITC Weidemann with the lively caps of ITC Zemke Hand. For the children sub-brand Dreckspatz, all-caps Neubau Sans (with angular ‘M’ and ‘N’) is paired with Zemke Hand.

Advertisement in the book Das Buch der Stadt Dresden 1926 for Rotax, manufacturer of bicycle wheel hubs.

“For Mario und der Zauberer we designed the programm-booklet La voce di Torre disguised as newspaper. As far the play is located in coffee house it seemed a reasonable idea to give the audience a informative newspaper in hands.” — Fons Hickmann