Britannic is a sans-serif

typeface A typeface (or font family) is the design of lettering that can include variations in size, weight (e.g. bold), slope (e.g. italic), width (e.g. condensed), and so on. Each of these variations of the typeface is a font. There are thousands o ...

family that was sold in metal type by Stephenson Blake. It is a "modulated" or stressed sans-serif design, in which the vertical lines are clearly thicker than the horizontals. The Klingspor Museum reports that it was originally created by the Wagner & Schmidt foundry of

Leipzig Leipzig ( , ; Upper Saxon: ) is the most populous city in the German state of Saxony. Leipzig's population of 605,407 inhabitants (1.1 million in the larger urban zone) as of 2021 places the city as Germany's eighth most populous, as ...

, Germany. In design it is intended for headings, advertisements and signs rather than continuous body text. Stephenson Blake advertised it as "just the right note for an advertising or display panel". Britannic Condensed

Since Stephenson Blake did not continue operations into digital fonts, a variety of digitisations of different weights and widths of Britannic have been released by different companies. Some releases include an all-capitals condensed weight. The bold weight, digitised by URW, is included with some

Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational technology corporation producing computer software, consumer electronics, personal computers, and related services headquartered at the Microsoft Redmond campus located in Redmond, Washin ...

software such as

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. A wry commentary on the design, presumably by Microsoft's typography manager Robert Norton, adds:

This interesting face always excites heated opinions. Some, like the writer, have always put Britannic Bold firmly in the category called 'Monumentally Overrated'. Others swear by it. In fact, a survey conducted at great expense (among three people) found that two out of three thought Britannic Bold was magnificent. And it can't be all bad, having started life at the renowned Stephenson Blake type foundry, and to have outlasted the same foundry's Rothbury, which to most people is probably indistinguishable...

Usage examples

Italian Army "The safeguard of the republic shall be the supreme law" , colors = , colors_labels = , march = ''Parata d'Eroi'' ("Heroes's parade") by Francesco Pellegrino, ''4 Maggio'' (May 4) ...

(''Esercito Italiano'') used Britannic Bold typeface for their logo.

References

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External links

Fonts in Use

American specimen sheet
letterpress typefaces Sans-serif typefaces Microsoft typefaces Display typefaces Stephenson Blake typefaces Typefaces and fonts introduced in 1906