Designed by Karl Reißberger before 1956, produced by Monotype as series 614 and officially released in 1962, Forte arguably is Austria’s most successful contribution to type design – after all, the bold brush script comes bundled with many Microsoft products since 1997. Karl Reißberger (1915–1983) was a commercial artist and a typesetter by trade who also taught typography and drawing in Vienna later in his life. Forte is Reissberger’s only typeface design. “The idea for this script face came from the study of plants, individual letterforms being inspired by the long stems and furry heads of the reed.” [Linotype] The digital versions omit the ‘ffi’/‘ffl’ ligatures and the alternate unslashed ‘7’ that were included in the original metal version.

Coinciding with the 60th anniversary of its release and the 25th anniversary of the inclusion in Microsoft Office applications, Tom Koch initiated an exhibition to be shown at Vienna’s Museumsquartier/Designforum in October 2022, as well as a publication in cooperation with Slanted Publishers. The project is accompanied by a global crowdsourcing campaign. Toshi Omagari is working on a new version titled Forte Forward, to be released with Microsoft in 2022.