typography Typography is the art and technique of arranging type to make written language legible, readable and appealing when displayed. The arrangement of type involves selecting typefaces, point sizes, line lengths, line-spacing ( leading), and ...

, Erbar or Erbar-Grotesk is a

sans-serif In typography and lettering, a sans-serif, sans serif, gothic, or simply sans letterform is one that does not have extending features called "serifs" at the end of strokes. Sans-serif typefaces tend to have less stroke width variation than seri ...

typeface in the geometric style, one of the first designs of this kind released as type. Designer Jakob Erbar's aim was to design a printing type which would be free of all individual characteristics, possess thoroughly legible letter forms, and be a purely typographic creation. His conclusion was that this could only work if the type form was developed from a fundamental element, the circle. Erbar-Grotesk was developed in stages; Erbar wrote that he had originally sketched out the design in 1914 but had been prevented from working on it due to the war. The original version of Erbar was released in 1926, following Erbar's "Phosphor" titling capitals of 1922 which are very similar in design.

Font

''Erbar'' was originally cast by the

Ludwig & Mayer Ludwig & Mayer was a German type foundry in Frankfurt am Main, Germany. Many important designers worked for the Ludwig and Mayer type foundry, including Heinrich Jost, Karlgeorg Hoefer, Helmut Matheis, and most notably Jakob Erbar, whose '' Erba ...

foundry of

Frankfurt, Germany Frankfurt, officially Frankfurt am Main (; Hessian: , " Frank ford on the Main"), is the most populous city in the German state of Hesse. Its 791,000 inhabitants as of 2022 make it the fifth-most populous city in Germany. Located on its ...

, with machine composition matrices later being offered by German and then American Linotype.Jaspert, Pincus, Berry and Johnson.''The Encyclopedia of Type Faces''. Blandford Press Lts.: 1953, 1983. Pp. 269-70 ''Erbar'' was later exported to the United States and sold by the

Continental Type Founders Association Continental Type Founders Association was founded by Melbert Brinckerhoff Cary Jr. in 1925 to distribute foundry type imported from European foundries. The influence of more modern European type design was thus felt in the United States for the ...

.Specimen Book of Continental Types, Continental Type Founders Association, N.Y.C., 1929. A digital version is sold today by Linotype. ''Erbar'' was cast in four weights with italic and condensed faces. Other variants were offered: * ''Lumina,'' an open face version. * ''Lux,'' a version with contrasting outlines. * ''Phosphor,'' an ultra-bold/inline display version similar to

Neuland Neuland is a German typeface that was designed in 1923 by Rudolf Koch for the Klingspor Type Foundry. Koch designed it by directly carving the type into metal. The original typeface thus had a great deal of variance between the sizes, something ...

, released slightly before Erbar itself.

Gallery

File:Erbar-1.jpg, Light weight File:Erbar-2.jpg, Regular weight File:Erbar-3.jpg, Regular weight File:Erbar-4.jpg, Bold weight File:Erbar-5.jpg, Bold weight File:Erbar-6.jpg, Condensed weight File:Erbar-7.jpg, Condensed bold

Influence on other typefaces

The success of Erbar inspired the creation of many new geometric sans-serif faces by competing foundries including Futura, Metro, Vogue,

Spartan Sparta ( Doric Greek: Σπάρτα, ''Spártā''; Attic Greek: Σπάρτη, ''Spártē'') was a prominent city-state in Laconia, in ancient Greece. In antiquity, the city-state was known as Lacedaemon (, ), while the name Sparta refe ...

and

Twentieth Century The 20th (twentieth) century began on January 1, 1901 (1901, MCMI), and ended on December 31, 2000 (2000, MM). The 20th century was dominated by significant events that defined the modern era: Spanish flu, Spanish flu pandemic, World War I and ...

among others. Of these, Futura proved to be the most successful and this, along with Jakob Erbar's early death, the small size of Erbar's Ludwig & Mayer Foundry and the international reach of Futura's Bauer Type Foundry, led to Erbar becoming less well-known than Futura. Phosphor — an ultra-bold and inline display design similar to Erbar, but released first — was particularly popular, and several imitations and revivals were created. Zhurnalnaya roublennaya (Журнальная рубленая) or Journal Grotesque was a Russian sans-serif created in the Soviet Union by Anatoly Schukin and others, and released from 1947 onwards, quite loosely inspired by Erbar and with Cyrillic and later Latin characters.

Digitisations

A leading unofficial Erbar digitisation is Dunbar, released by CJ Dunn in late 2016 as an unofficial digitisation in a choice of

x-height upright 2.0, alt=A diagram showing the line terms used in typography In typography, the x-height, or corpus size, is the distance between the baseline and the mean line of lowercase letters in a typeface. Typically, this is the height of the le ...

s named Dunbar Low, Dunbar Text and Dunbar Tall. It is also offered as a

variable font A variable font (VF) is a font file that is able to store a continuous range of design variants. An entire typeface (font family) can be stored in such a file, with an infinite number of fonts available to be sampled. The variable font technol ...

, in which the x-height and the weight can be varied smoothly, and as such is the first variable font on sale. As of 2016, several Erbar digitisations exist under this name. URW++ has released a revival of seven weights (of the normal width only), and a "Neo Mini" digitisation optimised for small sizes, with an enlarged x-height and solid weight. Linotype has digitised light and bold weights of the condensed style. Stephen Coles, an expert on digital fonts, has been critical of the Erbar digitisations on the market, writing that "there is no recommendable digital version...existing revivals neither capture the spirit or breadth of the original family. Still, if you really have a Erbar hankering, URW’s version is the most complete." Because of Phosphor's popularity, several revivals exist independently of the latter Erbar rereleases (none of which include it), by Monotype and others. Phosphate, an unofficial revival created by Red Rooster Fonts, is bundled with OS X. Zamenhof, by CastleType, is a large revival inspired by Russian adaptations of the style. Zhurnalnaya roublennaya has itself been digitised by Grilli Type as GT Eesti and (much more loosely) for ParaType as Journal Sans by Olexa Volochay, Maria Selezeneva and Alexandra Korolkova.

References

*Friedl, Ott, and Stein, ''Typography: an Encyclopedic Survey of Type Design and Techniques Throughout History.'' Black Dog & Levinthal Publishers: 1998. . *Jaspert, W. Pincus, W. Turner Berry and A.F. Johnson. ''The Encyclopedia of Type Faces.'' Blandford Press Lts.: 1953, 1983. .

External links