![]() In 1896 Berthold, which had become the biggest German type foundry, started releasing the Akzidenz Grotesk family, built up from existing and new Grotesks. But even for lookalikes the differences were huge, and it was impossible to create a coherent family of typefaces as we would know one today. ![]() As type foundries merged with others or started taking over smaller ones, along with their typefaces and matrices, they tried to put all the different Grotesks together, often renaming them in an effort to create one family. They had names such as Royal Grotesk, Breite Grotesk and Lilliput-Grotesk, and the fact that most of them included a lowercase made them suitable as a text typeface, too. Several German type foundries published their own Grotesks, some only in regular, some in bold or light, some only in one size, but always more or less lookalikes. These Grotesks turned out to be the most influential faces in the history of the sans serif, much more so than their English counterparts. In Germany at the end of the nineteenth century, the Grotesk (the German name for sans serif) gained popularity fast. From a design point of view these typefaces have little value, but it is interesting to note their existence. Two years later, William Thorowgood was the first to design a lowercase with his Seven Line Grotesque, introducing at the same time the word ‘Grotesque’. Vincent Figgins was the first to use the word sans serif when he designed Two-line Great Primer Sans-serif in 1832. This display face contained only capitals and it is not clear from where the rather clumsy forms originated. ![]() It was around 1816 that the English type foundry of William Caslon IV released Two Lines English Egyptian. Long before the first serif-less types for printing appeared, house painters and cartographers were painting and engraving sans serif numbers and letters. But is Helvetica really so good that it justifies its worldwide use on such a large scale? The typeface is even the subject of a new film, Helvetica (dir. It seemed to have come at the right time in the right place, and after it was renamed Helvetica in 1960 it quickly became even more ubiquitous, with a popularity it retains to this day. Fifty years ago Helvetica was released under the name Neue Haas Grotesk.
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