Permanent Headline is a bold, highly compressed

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

neo-grotesque 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 se ...

style. It was designed by

Karlgeorg Hoefer Karlgeorg Hoefer (6 February 1914 – 8 October 2000) was a German calligrapher and typographer. Hoefer was born in Schlesisch-Drehnow (now Drzonów) in Silesia. He taught typography at the Hochschule für Gestaltung Offenbach (until 1970 "We ...

for the type foundry

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 ...

Frankfurt am Main 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 na ...

. It was released from 1964 and later issued by a range of companies in

phototypesetting Phototypesetting is a method of setting type. It uses photography to make columns of type on a scroll of photographic paper. It has been made obsolete by the popularity of the personal computer and desktop publishing (digital typesetting). Th ...

and digital versions. Similar to other common newspaper typefaces intended to be compact, such as

Times New Roman Times New Roman is a serif typeface. It was commissioned by the British newspaper ''The Times'' in 1931 and conceived by Stanley Morison, the artistic adviser to the British branch of the printing equipment company Monotype, in collaboration w ...

, the design has deliberately minimised descenders to save space. This distortion reaches an extreme level in Permanent Headline, with the descenders eliminated and tails such as the curve of the 'y' kept above the baseline. The

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 ...

(height of lower-case letters) is very high. The design is highly folded-up and condensed with narrow

apertures In optics, an aperture is a hole or an opening through which light travels. More specifically, the aperture and focal length of an optical system determine the cone angle of a bundle of rays that come to a focus in the image plane. An ...

, making the design harder to read at distance. Permanent Headline was also released in an "outlined" style and in versions with regular descenders. It was part of a larger “Permanent” sans-serif family without these attributes, which did not achieve such lasting popularity and has mostly not been digitised. In the United States it was initially released by Amsterdam Continental. Permanent Headline's highly compact, tightly spaced and industrial design is a prominent example of the aggressive, menacing style of graphic design that despite its poor legibility was popular in the 1960s and 70s, and was often used for purposes besides newspapers, such as book covers. It resembles other condensed designs (both typefaces and custom lettering) of the period, such as Schmalfette Grotesk (and its successor

Haettenschweiler Haettenschweiler is a sans-serif typeface in the grotesque style that is very bold and condensed. It is intended for headlines and display text. Schmalfette Grotesk Versions of the font that are now commonly used are descend from an upper-case onl ...

), Linotype's Helvetica Inserat and other German designs. Similar British designs from the period include

Letraset Letraset was a company known mainly for manufacturing sheets of typefaces and other artwork elements using the dry transfer method. Letraset has been acquired by the Colart group and become part of its subsidiary Winsor & Newton. Corporate histor ...

’s Compacta, Stephenson Blake’s

Impact Impact may refer to: * Impact (mechanics), a high force or shock (mechanics) over a short time period * Impact, Texas, a town in Taylor County, Texas, US Science and technology * Impact crater, a meteor crater caused by an impact event * Impac ...

and

Matthew Carter Matthew Carter (born 1 October 1937) is a British type designer.Christophe_Plantin.html" ;"title="y Christophe Plantin">y Christophe Plantin' in typography's golden age was in perfect condition (some muddle aside) long withPlantin's accoun ...

’s masthead for '' Private Eye''.

References

{{reflist, 30em

External links

Karlgeorg Hoefer
(memorial site, listing typefaces)
Fonts in Use - Permanent Headline
Neo-grotesque sans-serif typefaces Display typefaces