In 2025, the Typographische Gesellschaft Austria (Typographic Society Austria, tga) organized the anniversary edition of what is one of the best typography conferences I’ve attended. The symposium took place in late August on Burg Raabs an der Thaya – which is, hands down, the most spectacular venue for such an event.

Visiting the symposium allowed me to revisit some of the places I had photographed on previous occasions. This includes the script lettering on the former shop of Josef Stallecker on Hauptplatz, the municipality’s main square. On two sides of the single-story building, it mentions his profession, “Sattler Tapezierer” (“upholsterer, decorator”), and the areas of services, “Polstermöbel Bodenbelag” (“upholstered furniture, floor covering”).

With their reluctant connections and the crammed m, the low-contrast letterforms reminded me of IBM Script, a monospaced script made in the 1960s for the IBM Selectric typewriter. However, the actual source is another three decades older than that: the unknown sign maker patterned the letterforms after Signal, a foundry typeface first cast by Berthold in 1931. Its slightly awkward shapes – strung like beads on a string, with built-in connectors – have to do with the fact that metal script typefaces from that era were produced to have no overhangs, so that no delicate parts would break in the stereotyping process.

The lettering was engraved into the plaster and then painted in. I’m not sure what happened to “Josef” and “Sattler” – were these words left uncolored? Did they use a different color that faded away over the years?

Established in 1912 (by Josef’s parents?), the family business is currently run by Thomas Stallecker. It’s now located about 200 m to the west, still at Hauptplatz. The painted sign on the yellow façade reads “Raumausstatter Stallecker” (“interior decorator”) and uses Tintoretto. This bicolor typeface – a shaded variant of Aldo Manutio – was issued by Schelter & Giesecke in 1894. It got a new lease of life after Letraset issued their version in the early 1970s. Stallecker uses it in two shades of brown, with an underline for good measure.

For comparison, a resetting of the words in FDI Lettograph. This 2024 digitization is largely faithful to the original, with the exception of the p. In Signal, this letter is open at the bottom, as in German school script models (and also in formal scripts).

Metal Signal came with two forms for the lowercase r, but without one that omits the exit stroke (FDI Lettograph automatically inserts such a contextual alternate, see above). The sign painter invented an optimized terminal form for “Sattler”, but didn’t use it for “Tapezierer”. In “Stallecker”, they made up for it with an impromptu swash.

The business’s new location with the name in bichromatic Tintoretto

View of Raabs, with the castle – the conference venue featuring the tga’s pink flag – in the background

Print ad for new releases and reissues in the educational book series Kamprath-Skelett – kurz und bündig (“briefly and concisely”) by Ernst Kamprath Verlag, Leipzig. The listed titles include “quick lessons with visual aids in three-color printing” for Latin and French grammar, world and cultural history, and physics.

The design may look like a piece of multiscript typography at first, with its mix of disparate typefaces. And indeed scholars like young (dogmatic and chauvinistic) Jan Tschichold considered blackletter typefaces to be something fundamentally different than roman (incl. sans-serif and “Latin” script) type, denouncing them in die neue typographie from 1928 as “nationalism”, alongside actual non-Latin scripts like Greek, Cyrillic, Arabic, Chinese etc. But of course all text in this advert is in the Latin script – including the blackletter.

The typefaces are Walter Tiemann’s Tiemann-Fraktur (Klingspor, 1914/1918) and Walter Wege’s Signal (Berthold, 1931/1932). Both appear in two weights each: the large “kurz und bündig” at the top is in the light Script-Signal.

From Wikipedia:

Beat Rodeo (also known as The Beat Rodeo) was a country rock band from New York City during the 1980s.

Headliner’s Catalina was used in Beat Rodeo’s album Staying Out Late With for the artist name. The title above is set in Signal. The sans on the sticker is Frutiger.

[More info at Discogs]

In Amsterdam’s excellent music recording studio IJland, a Telefunken Magnetophon M5 broadcast or studio deck is used to “glue” digital audio mixes together by using old hardware. It has a magic touch with music production.

The Magnetophon tape recorder was one of the first recording machines to use magnetic tape in preserving voice and music. The brand name Magnetophon – introduced in 1935 by AEG and later continued by Telefunken – became the generic word for the tape recorder in a lot of languages. On this device, it’s shown in outlined script letters based on Signal.

First edition jacket for The Band of the Red Hand, an early book by Margaret Rau, who was born 1913 in Swatow, Guangdong, China, and later lived in the United States. The “Chinese mystery story” is directed at children and was published by Alfred A. Knopf in 1938, with cover art by Joseph Low.

The title typography combines Signal with the shaded caps of Plastica, another 1930s Berthold release. It could also be Ludlow’s Umbra, which is virtually identical for the letters in question.

Poster designed by F.H.K. Henrion for Red Army Day on February 23, 1943, issued by the Joint Committee for Soviet Aid during World War II:

Donations to Joint Committee for Soviet Aid under the Patronage of H.E. The Soviet Ambassador

Born Heinrich Fritz Kohn in Nuremberg, Germany, in 1914, the designer later named himself Frederick Henri Kay Henrion. He went to Paris to study with Paul Colin and there discovered the works of Cassandre as well as the Surrealists, which gave him a taste for collage and photomontage. In 1939, he moved to London. After being interned on the Isle of Man as an alien, Henrion worked for the Ministry of Information and the US Office of War Information, using his talents as a poster designer to support the war effort against Nazi Germany.

The poster depicts a soldier wearing a helmet with a red star on it over his bandaged face, rendered with a coarse halftone effect. While “red army day feb. 23” is in Block-Signal, “AID THE WOUNDED” is shown in bold condensed caps, slanted and on a sloping baseline. These are either custom drawn or from an unidentified typeface. The Signal glyphs might be rendered by hand. At least the numerals don’t match those shown on a specimen card. The small print is set in two italic weights from Erbar-Grotesk.

Nine years after his first book, You Can’t Print That!, George Seldes (1890–1995) used a very similar title: You Can’t Do That is “a survey of the forces attempting, in the name of patriotism, to make a desert of the Bill of Rights”. It was published by Modern Age Books in 1938 and includes a selected bibliography on civil liberties in the United States, compiled by Clarice A. Rosenthal, M. Meeker, M. Ottenberg, and others for the American Civil Liberties Union.

For the title, book designer Robert Josephy chose Signal – a typeface he already used two years before, for Edmund Wilson’s Travels in Two Democracies. The author’s name is in Tempo Heavy with its long-legged R. The articles appear to be set in Futura. The full-circled C in “Congress” and the straight comma and semicolon don’t match Futura, but I’m not aware of a closer match. Maybe Josephy touched up the setting manually [Bryson identified it as Vogue with alternates, see comments].

The back of the jacket advertises the Seal Books imprint. It features Bauer’s Quick, known in the United States as Trafton Script. Copy is set in Sans Serif, Monotype’s copy of Kabel, which is distinguished by the lower bar in A and the top-heavy S, among other things. The bottom line is Tempo Medium Italic with its distinctive flat exit strokes.

2016 Naval and Military Press reprint of the original 1941 edition

This comprehensive guide to street fighting by Captain S.J. Cuthbert of the Scots Guards was originally published in Britain in 1941, during World War II. The topics covered include: “Ground, Defence, Attack, Use of Explosives, Arms and Equipment, Training and Excercise”.

The book was illustrated by John G. Walter and originally printed by Gale & Polden Ltd., at their Wellington Press, Aldershot, Hampshire. A 1965 hardcover edition by Panther Publications is amended with “a Soviet View of Combat in Cities.”

The title is shown in two slightly curved lines. The letters appears to be drawn by hand, closely based on Signal, but with a less angular h.

1965 hardcover edition by Panther Publications, Boulder, Colorado, with red title. There was also a paperback edition by Paladin Press, Boulder, with a monochrome cover.

Signal in contemporary use: the Heidekrautbahn is a railroad line that runs from the north of Berlin to the districts of Oberhavel and Barnim in Brandenburg. Its name – the “Heather Railroad” – is derived from the Schorfheide woodland, a popular day trip destination for city dwellers at the end of the line.

Inaugurated in 1901, the line had its heyday in the 1940s, with more than 4.5 million passengers in 1942. After the construction of the Berlin Wall in 1961, the original start and end station Berlin-Wilhelmsruh was cut off from the rest of the line. The Heidekrautbahn today is operated by the Niederbarnimer Eisenbahn (NEB) again, which aims to revive the main line in late 2024, and even has plans for extension.

For the 120th anniversary of the Heidekrautbahn, NEB introduced a new logo and rebranded with Signal, possibly for its nostalgic qualities. The name might have played a role, too. The angular low-contrast script is three decades younger than the railroad line: it originated at the Berthold foundry in Berlin-Kreuzberg in 1931.

The anniversary logo with the number and the byline in Frutiger

Signal on the cover of Die Heidekrautbahn – a special publication on the line’s history and its reactivation

A 1936 print advertisement for the National Theatre Supply Company, which specialized in manufacturing theater equipment and accessories.

“Behind The Scenes” is tracked out Franklin Gothic, and “National Service” uses the medium weight of Signal, with an enlarged exclamation point. The body text uses Metromedium, Century Bold and Bold Italic, with the name of the company using caps from Cheltenham Bold Extra Condensed.

Writers take sides on the question: Are you for, or are you against Franco and fascism? Are you for, or are you against the legal government and the people of Republican Spain?

This book with 418 American authors weighing in on the Spanish Civil War was edited by Millen Brand, Dorothy Brewster, Harry Carlisle, and Groff Conklin, and published by the League Of American Writers in 1938. The featured voices include Gertrude Atherton, Brooks Atkinson, Carl Becker, Kenneth Burke, Countee Cullen, William Faulkner, Edna Ferber, Felix Frankfurter, Dashiell Hammett, Ernest Hemingway, Langston Hughes, James Weldon Johnson, Rockwell Kent, Stanley Kunitz, George Seldes, Upton Sinclair, John Steinbeck, Genevieve Taggard, Clara Weatherwax, and Richard Wright.

“Gives greater cachet” – ad by furniture manufacturer Thonet in an issue of De 8 en Opbouw from October 1937, a bimonthly journal jointly issued by the architecture groups De 8 in Amsterdam and Opbouw in Rotterdam.

In 1927, Lettergieterij „Amsterdam” voorheen N. Tetterode, or Typefoundry Amsterdam, started to work together with the Berthold foundry in Berlin. The best-known fruit of this partnership probably is Nobel, De Roos’s adaptation of Berthold-Grotesk. The two foundries also exchanged a number of designs: Berthold received Erasmus-Mediaeval (as Oranien-Mediäval) and Hollandse Mediaeval (as Holländische Mediäval), and in return Amsterdam could distribute Lo-Schrift (as Nero), Tango-Antiqua (as Luna), City (as Métro), and Plastica (as Duplex). Shown here is Sirene, which was Amsterdam’s name for Signal.

Less than three years after this ad was published, Nazi Germany invaded and occupied the Netherlands, and the typographic cooperation came to an abrupt end.

Advertising flyer for the scouring agent Fegeputz. While the slogan, the brand name and the price information feature custom lettering, the copy is set in Bernhard-Fraktur. The sans printed in red is Futura fett, the line in reverse at the bottom is the schmalhalbfett style from Paul Renner’s geometric sans family.

The tips on the back combine headlines in Signal with Futura schräg halbfett, both mounted on an angle. Walter Wege’s script is used with the hooked form of u – which is a means to distinguish the letter from an n.

Süßmost – Volksgetränk! (“Sweet must – popular drink!”) is a “practical guide for making unfermented fruit and berry juices at home and in the family”, edited by Maria Kirschner and Alfons Baumgärtner and published by the Catholic Hoheneck-Verlag who dedicated several of its titles to the fight against alcoholism. In 1934, it was located in Berlin SW 48. Baumgärtner may or may not be identical with the clergyman of this name. The cover illustration is by Paula Fischer (signed as “PF”).

The image is taken from the Flickr stream of Rolf Müller a.k.a. grispx, who comments: “The self-supply of the people was one of the percepts of the National Socialists… maybe the least malicious maxim of them.”

Signal is here seen with its eszett (ß) and two umlauts. The blackletter is the bold weight of Senats-Fraktur, designed by Friedrich Bauer and first cast by Genzsch & Heyse in 1912.

Packaging for Deutsche Edel-Stärke (“German deluxe starch”), a fabric stiffener produced by Deutsche Edelstärkefabrik Heinrich Dehnert, featuring the Stärke-Tante (“Aunt Starch”). The fonts in use – two weights of Tannenberg (1933) and one of Signal (1931) – suggest a date in the 1930s.

Source: www.abebooks.com Zed Books. License: All Rights Reserved.

Book jacket (front)

The first edition of Edmund Wilson’s Travels in Two Democracies uses two weights from Signal. Designed by Walter Wege, this non-kerning informal script was first cast by the Berthold foundry in Berlin. While the title on the book jacket is set in the regular weight from 1931, the cloth cover sports the lighter Script-Signal that was added in 1932. Both times the words are placed on a sloping baseline, counterbalancing the slant of the script letters.

Ralf Herrmann currently is running a campaign to fund the creation of a faithful digitization of all three weights of Signal, including the bold Block-Signal not featured in this use, plus a variable version. If you want to help the project to reach its goal, you can do so for a couple more days, until November 21, 2023.

Source: iaddb.org Scan courtesy of IAADB. License: All Rights Reserved.

“Expensive hand lettering? Certainly not” – Signal was imported to the United States by Continental Typefounders Association, Inc. This advert mentioning all three weights and showing the bold Block-Signal (alongside Stempel’s Zarte Memphis) was included in the November 1934 issue of Advertising Arts.

Edmund Wilson (1895–1972) is best known as literary critic, but also was an author of poetry, fiction, memoirs, and more. Travels in Two Democracies is one of his political writings, in which he compares life in the Depression-era United States and in the Soviet Union. The book was published in 1936, a few years after diplomatic relations between the two nations were established – and shortly before Stalin instituted the Great Purge, consolidating power to become a dictator.

The book typography is credited to Robert Josephy. Chances are he designed the jacket and cover as well.

Source: www.abebooks.com Zed Books. License: All Rights Reserved.

The author’s name is set in caps from Stymie.

Source: www.abebooks.com Zed Books. License: All Rights Reserved.

Book cover with the title in the lighter Script-Signal

Source: www.abebooks.com Peak Dragon Bookshop. License: All Rights Reserved.

Book cover with spine

Source: www.abebooks.com Zed Books. License: All Rights Reserved.

Full jacket. Additional text on the back and the inner flaps is set in Bodoni, ATF Garamond, and Vogue. From the book’s description:

In a special sense, Edmund Wilson was well qualified to do this book, because during his long visit to Russia he discovered exactly what it meant to be an American, and he came back with a strong sense of his own nationality. “I feel convinced,” he writes, “that American republican institutions, disastrously as they are always being abused, have some permanent and absolute value.” He adds, however: “We shall be in no position to reprove the Russians till we shall he able to show them an American socialism which is free from the Russian defects.”

Hand-drawn 1950s public transport map for Berlin with a cover set in Signal and Feder-Grotesk.

Front cover

This booklet was issued by the Brazil Nut Association, New York. A version was advertised as early as in 1936, already featuring Kernel Nut of Brazil as seen on the back cover. The booklet was still distributed in 1950. The date of this specific editon is unknown.

While the cover combines script lettering with caps from Beton extrafett (1930), the recipe headings use the light weight of Signal, a.k.a. Script-Signal (1932), contrasted with caps from Ultra Bodoni (1928). Text appears to be set in Bodoni.

Via Lileks. See Chadbourne Antiques & Collectibles for more images.

Back cover

A mysterious and modest flea market find – a booklet (150×243 mm) containing the lyrics of three Leonard Cohen albums: Songs of Leonard Cohen (1967), Songs From a Room (1969) and Songs of Love and Hate (1971). Other than a thank you to “Hank of Casterun”, there is no information included about publisher or a publication date.

The title is set with Signal or – more likely – the printer used Lettergieterij Amsterdam’s version named Sirene. For some reason, the letters are slightly disconnected. The interior uses another Lettergieterij Amsterdam release: Hollandse Mediaeval, designed by Sjoerd Hendrik de Roos in 1912.

Table of contents, with CBS Records release code for each album. A odd numbering is used for the list of songs: 1, 2, 4, 4, 6, 6, 7, 8, 8, 9 etc.

Detail. Zooming in on the type reveals small imperfections: for instance, most lowercase o’s have a bit of dirt on the right side.

From the illustrious Peter Pauper Press of upstate Mount Vernon, New York. Peter and Edna Beilenson were the original proprietors, producing beautifully printed books "at prices a pauper could afford." The Beilenson family still runs the business.

The illustrator is Joseph Low. Edna Beilenson may have designed the book, but there is no designer credit.