Footnotes, issue E

Footnotes is a type design periodical published biennially by La Police. The fifth issue opens with an article by Florian Hardwig on Permanent drawn by Karlgeorg Hoefer, a seemingly-forgotten German Grotesk that designers worldwide have studied-by-drawing off-grid.

Thanks to Sébastien Morlighem, we’re now well aware that Pierre-Louis Vafflard cut types for the Didot dynasty, beautiful ones.

The third essay, from the One-off series – contextual type projects from graphic designers – sheds some light on the Belgian figure of Fernand Baudin through a digital re-enactment of his many (hand)writings by Coline Sunier & Charles Mazé.

The last contribution overlaps theory with practise, past with present. A designer’s journey, from the educational binder of Swiss teacher Walter Käch full of lessons to digital redrawings of his template letterforms by Dinamo and Omnigroup (ABC Walter Neue and ABC Walter Alte).

To conclude, the traditional last page entitled Proofs showcases in-progress typefaces from the contributors: Mercator (Laurenz Brunner), Zero, Ninety, Linus (Charles Mazé), LP Jung, Olympia Manuscript No. 4 (Mathieu Christe), Walter Compressed, Slab, Mono (Dinamo, Omnigroup), and Didot Vafflard and Vafflard (Dávid Molnár).

As with every issue, each article is typeset with the related typeface(s), some in-progress and unreleased. The generous iconography also tries to pleasantly surprise the reader with unpublished material.