In the summer of 2024, Tausend designer Christoph Koeberlin drew his colleague Gabriel Richter’s attention to Dan Reynold’s article on the history of Akzidenz-Grotesk. Reynolds proves that the 1895 Schattierte Grotesk typeface by Bauer & Co. Type Foundry was more than just a decorative offshoot. In fact, it can be considered the origin of the form from which Berthold AG – shortly after taking over Bauer – developed Akzidenz-Grotesk. Reynolds: “If you remove the drop shadow from the letters of Schattierte Grotesk, the forms of Akzidenz-Grotesk clearly emerge.”

This sparked curiosity and fascination from Christoph and immediately ignited an idea. “Why not revive the earliest version of Akzidenz-Grotesk with two or three shaded weights?” Tausend already contained the basic form: a contemporary, systematically developed grotesque typeface with a touch of Bauhaus. Therefore, enriching it with a shaded variant shouldn’t be that much of a problem.

In the early 1980s, Günter Gerhard Lange, the artistic director of Berthold AG, once again took a close look at the original Akzidenz Grotesk. He developed a new version, which was released in 1984 under the name AG Old Face and, according to the manufacturer, it was more closely based on the early Akzidenz Grotesk. It had only three weights but it didn’t contain any italics. Instead, it included a Shaded style, which once again underlines the important role of this style.

Gabriel Richter, who tongue-in-cheek calls himself an “old systematics expert,” took on the task of expanding Tausend Shaded. His mission: to create a consistent shadow typeface based on Tausend across multiple stroke weights. It sounds simple, but it wasn’t.

The first challenge: As the stroke weight increases, the space for shading shrinks. While there is plenty of space in Light, it becomes very tight in Black. In an initial test, a shadow was applied to the lowercase letter a in Black.

“How deep, how wide, how airy should the shadow be?” Gabriel asked himself and found the answer: The eye decides! Christoph’s reaction to the initial draft: “Fancy! But I think we should give it a little more space. And the tricky part will probably be that the line doesn’t touch the base outline anywhere!” In fact, it will be even more intense: in critical letters, the outline will skip over its own shadow… after the two designers had done so beforehand.

In several rounds of testing, the designers explored the ideal spacing, curve guidance and parallelism.

It quickly became clear that a static system would not work. The solution: shading that adapts organically – depending on the character, curves, and stroke thickness. Gabriel: “The depth varies, as in the original font: more manual than mathematical.”

However, the original idea of “two to three weights” was no longer enough for them. They had long since set their sights on developing a complete subfamily.

After several weeks of development, a look inside Tausend Shaded revealed an unparalleled feat of ingenuity:

• Each a, e, and s had to be individually edited in all styles.
• Accents were slightly shifted upward in the bolder styles instead of being compressed.

• The shadows do not simply run alongside the letters; no, they are deliberately guided, shaped, adjusted, narrowed, and even jump over the contours.

• Many characters, especially those with diacritics, required complex, unique shadow shapes.

Gabriel is self-deprecating: “How wonderful that conventional components no longer fit together.” Just one example: The letter ą in the original Tausend is a combination of a and ˛ … This does not work in Shaded; here, a separate, manually created transition shadow is required.

Tausend Shaded is not a gimmicky typeface. It is a statement for craftsmanship and it rallies against the algorithmic arbitrariness that has characterized many display fonts for decades.

The shadow shape is not the result of a geometric filter, but of individual design decisions – for each character in each stroke weight. All transitions are drawn, not generated. Every curve is conceived, not interpolated.

The “Schattierte Grotesk” from 1895 was a decorative precursor to the later Akzidenz-Grotesk. Tausend Shaded draws upon this idea – not as an imitation, but as a transformation. It carries the spirit of that time, but takes it further.

Tausend Shaded proves that shadows do not always stand for darkening, but that they can have the opposite effect. Shaded reveals what holds a font together at its core.

The best for last (thanks for reading to the end!): Tausend Shaded is available free of charge as a Base License (1 Desktop-User, 10,000 Web-Pageviews, 10,000 Social-Media-Followers).

Get Tausend Shaded free of charge

From the architecture of the two-story a, type designers create the blueprint for a complete alphabet: contrast, arch, angle, stroke, finial and the counters define the DNA of a typeface. No wonder that a very special ‘a’ became the seed for the new Tausend Font Collection.

About three years ago, while designing his typeface Tresor, Christoph Koeberlin sketched a very special and particular a. It took a more straightforward and clean design direction and found itself in the tradition of German grotesque typefaces, but retained an anarchistic core: the slight overhang, the gentle top-heaviness, the minimal contrast, the smile and wink in the curves. It was these promising details that Koeberlin later wanted to explore.

He ended up doing this together with type designer Gabriel Richter. They had met a few years earlier, while Richter was working as an intern at FontShop International in Berlin. He has since published FontFont Infra (2019) and other fonts under his own label, nice to type. Based in Fukuoka, Japan, Richter has become an expert in geometric sans serifs and can always be counted on to bring a sense of surprise and delight in this field.

Koeberlin on Richter: “I really appreciate the open collaboration with Gabriel. And his fonts are totally cool and innovative.” Richter on Koeberlin: “Christoph is a master of precision work. When it comes to breaking the rules, we are on the same wavelength.” Because the two understand each other so well and complement each other, they quickly found a development path for Tausend. First, Richter tried out different directions from the a.

“You can only judge a design course if you follow it consistently,” is how he describes his role as the driving force behind the project. Very quickly they came to the same realization that the “roundness” would be a distinctive strength of the typeface and that this would make Tausend refreshingly modern.

As the process continued, Koeberlin further modified the stroke width of masters and metrics several times, which Richter then transferred to the character groups, taking into account suggestions for the design of accents and special characters. They were just as meticulous when it came to the language expansion of the typeface by making sure it was in accordance with the new version of DIN 91379 from 2022. DIN 91379 stands for “Characters and defined character sequences in Unicode for the electronic processing of names and data exchange in Europe”, which, loosely translated, means: According to this standard, a font covers all official EU languages, as well as the official languages of Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway and Switzerland plus German minority languages. Tausend conforms to this standard and so is suitable for authorities, organizations and brands that want to communicate accessibly in the “Western world”. The importance of the standard is growing and it is currently being developed into the European DIN EN 00224284 standard.

In this context, companies and their design teams often ask themselves: Does the appearance of the typeface also integrate well? Christoph Koeberlin has the right answer when describing the personality of Tausend: “Our new typeface is brutally honest, proud and confident. If that is what brands or products are, they will find the right team player in Tausend. As a reminder: ‘In for a penny, in for a pound’. It is not enough to put your own values ​​and demands into the world at some point… they need to be lived continuously. Especially in design.”

The fact that the development of Tausend progressed quickly, despite the time difference between Koeberlin’s and Richter’s desks (Berlin, Germany – Fukuoka, Japan), is amazing. Richter: “I gave Christoph the latest files every day shortly before work and he did the same 12 hours later. So we halved the development time without getting stressed.”

The name of Christoph Koeberlin and Gabriel Richter’s new type family says a lot about its quality. It stands for size and diversity, for abundance and potential: a thousand ideas, a thousand possibilities, a thousand reasons. It makes texts mysterious (“One Thousand and One Nights”) and titles a hit: “Thousand Miles”. Tausend sets milestones: a thousand glyphs, a thousand languages, a thousand kerning pairs.

The font is a multi-talent, a universal genius, a jack of all trades. And Tausend was also the zip code of Berlin, the city where the designers met at a time when neutral grotesques with low stroke contrast were at the height of their popularity.

Originally, because of their reduced form, they were used for occasional printed materials, advertising and signage. With the appearance of the reader-friendly Akzidenz-Grotesk in Berlin in 1898, they were also used as bread-and-butter type, i.e. for bulk typesetting. Half a century later, AG was the inspiration for Helvetica (1957) and countless other imitation typefaces, and is considered the basis for what is still the most popular font genre.

According to the classification standard DIN 16518, such typefaces are assigned to the “sans serif linear antiqua” category. If one wants to categorize it according to the principle of form, it is a “static grotesque”. As the demands on typefaces have increased in the digital age and both taste and technology have changed, static grotesques also need to be reinvented. Tausend is leading the way here, because it is not looking back but forward by giving up a small part of its static nature. Thanks to variable font technology, Tausend is not being launched with nine weights from Thin to Black, but with… that’s right, 1000, including 100 extra-bold weights marked with the label “Too Black” (a treasure trove for anarchists and avant-gardists). If you want to develop your typographic concept in a classic way, you will find the familiar, static style designations Thin, Light, Regular, Medium and so on in the font menu, ten in total.

Another practical function of Tausend are the optical sizes. They improve the reading quality and impact of different text sizes, from small print and typesetting to title typesetting and poster design. You no longer have to worry about the manual finishing of a text, such as percentage increases or decreases in running width. With Tausend, everything is already coordinated, not only the spacing, but also the letter shapes and their relationship to each other. For example, the counters open up for small font sizes, while the details in the shapes of Tausend Plakat (German: Poster) become more visible for larger sizes, this is most clearly recognizable in the capital W. The optical size is denser and more compact than the basic version, complemented by a lower contrast, smaller apertures, narrower spacing, accents that end with the cap height and ascenders, as well as more unpolished forms.

Parallel to the “classic” Tausend with the optical size of Plakat, there is Tausend Soft, the first large static grotesque family with discreetly rounded corners, which has been developed in the same way. These fonts were originally designed for media and situations in which the edges of the letters are affected, such as on television screens or backlit signs. Sharp fonts then become dull and unpredictable and the appearance of such texts differs from the printed typeface. This is why the corners were ground off from the outset. Today, there are different types of media that require indestructible fonts – smart watches are just one example.

Two other versions of Tausend are aimed at use in larger sizes. The elegant stencil version is reminiscent of the AG Book Stencil, designed by Günter Gerhard Lange in 1985, which is no longer available digitally. Tausend Stencil was also developed as a variable font with two axes, one of which offers 800 weights whose gaps or bars can be widened or narrowed in 40 steps via the second axis.

The fourth sub-family is called Tausend Shaded, a grotesque with nine static weights (and 205 variable weights), whose shadows adapt visually to the weight and can be understood as a further homage to AG, namely to its first appearance under the name “Schattierte Grotesk” in 1895. Tausend Shaded was Gabriel Richter’s responsibility: “It was one of the biggest challenges in my professional career,” the type designer emphasizes: “The growing shadows really got on my nerves.”

But the work was worth it. This fourth style adds an unusual option for striking purposes to the Tausend Collection, which requires just as much skill to use as it does to produce. Best of all, you can now try out all the variants for yourself with our free demo fonts, which are identical in scope and function to the normal versions except for the currency symbols. Because we want to encourage you to experiment, you can also order the full Shaded version free of charge in the Base License for 1 user, 10,000 web pageviews per month and 10,000 social media followers.

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Helvetica, Akzidenz-Grotesk, AG Book and AG are registered trademarks of Monotype Imaging Inc.

The design of Push echoes the letterforms of the first one hundred years of sans serifs yet carries its own weight in a very contemporary manner. Its bold condensed, crossbar-less capital ‘G’ takes inspiration from Thorowgood’s 1830 Seven-Line Grotesque, while the lowercase ‘a’ follows in the same vein as Plak from 1930. A character set that features a looped Anglo-American ‘g’ in addition to a Grotesk two-storey ‘g’ and an open-sloped ‘Danish g’ adds to this mixed background from the Old and the New World.

Instead of sweeping through the family in a massive interpolation operation, designer Christine Gertsch began to work on the extreme widths of the bold weights in order to remain in full control of the curvature and to avoid too much compromise.

The intentional change in curvature across Push’s widths and weights is a key feature of its anatomy. A transformation that is visible throughout the family from subtle, but tense curves in the extra-condensed and extra-light weight at one end to massively confident extra-wide and extra-bold styles at the other. Almost naturally, Push Regular maintains a level-headed and calm posture between these extremes.

The transitional behaviour of Push creates contrast within the family not just by width and weight, but by shape and counter-shape. This is an intriguing feature that comes in handy in every complex typographic system on any medium. As a visual side effect of these characteristics, a Stylistic Set allows accents and punctuation marks to dance around the main characters in a slightly lighter fashion.

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It was not only the transparent, partly colored plastic tubes and terrariums that made an impression on the designer, but also the animals. Their two-tone fur inspired Joe to design his typeface as a Color Font. The rounded ends and bold font weights are reminiscent of the rodents’ distinctive chubby cheeks. The characteristics cuddly and chubby therefore apply equally to both animal and font. The lighter weights appear less playful and would make for a perfect logotype for young fashion brands, for example.

“We wanted Hamster to be a celebration of joy and delight,” explains Joe Stitzlein. Therefore, he had color expert Leslie Stitzlein define an additional 13 fixed combinations, some colorful and playful, some subtle and elegant. While Grape Soda, Barbecue, Raspberry, Indigo and Burgundy are all darker and designed to work on white and pass WCAG (W3C’s Web Content Accessibility Guidelines) contrast standards, Corn Mint, Mint Salmon, Mint Green, Gray Pink, Orange Pink, Pink Red, Tan White and Lavender work best on dark backgrounds. A non-color font and thus traditionally usable variant rounds off the palette.

In total, 15 variable fonts and 90 static fonts are available, as a complete package for the price of less than four individual styles – so even the purchase is fun!

Hamster is a refreshingly playful, fun font full of typographic possibilities. It’s the perfect addition to all designers’ type palettes, who like this namesake, are keen on collecting, fonts rather than nuts, of course ;) But unlike the cuddly role model, this hamster doesn’t even need to be fed … except with happy ideas.

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With a compact overall impression, extreme widths, a variable-first approach and a touch of elegance, we have combined the requirements of the digital world with modern German engineering. The DIN typeface has been thoroughly reimagined in a way that our brand new flexible incarnation breathes life into the Normschrift standard. And just like 100 years ago … It’s 100% Made in Berlin.

The abbreviation DIN is sometimes assumed to stand for Deutsche Industrie Norm. However, this meaning is outdated; today the three letters stand for the German Institute for Standardization, (Deutsches Institut für Normung) which sees itself as an independent platform.

A century ago, engineers – under the leadership of the Siemens employee Ludwig Goller – began working for what was then known as the Standardization Committee of German Industry (NADI). NADI began standardizing the lettering of technical drawings, starting in 1919 with oblique block letters and then in 1938 with upright standard lettering (DIN 16 and 17).

As well as working on these standards, the committee also published a narrow grotesque typeface which was based on one by the Royal Prussian Railway Administration from 1905. The committee started working on it in around 1924 and it became part of DIN 1451 “Normschriften – Engschrift, Mittelschrift, Breitschrift” (Standard typefaces – Narrow, Medium, Wide Typefaces). In 1936, it was published for the fields of technology and transport.

The core characteristics of this sans-serif, that was based on a coarse grid, were a quick and easy reproducibility and a high legibility which was also recognized internationally. These requirements resulted in a monolinear stroke width that had up until then been taboo. Apart from modernist movements such as the Bauhaus and a few block letter alphabets for sign painters, typefaces at that time were normally artfully designed, emphasizing individual expression and were subject to changing fashions.

The engineers’ constructed script was intended to function independently of future trends and technical limitations. Its geometric character was ideally suited to the tasks it was intended for. For many decades, it was reserved for use on street and place signs, license plates as well as postmarks, technical drawings, documentations, traffic signs, road signs and signposts and lettering for the German Reichsbahn and Deutsche Bahn.

Although more than 50 countries have adapted the sans-serif for similar purposes, “DIN” is considered by many to be the official typeface of Germany.

DIN 1451 has been revised or supplemented several times, most recently in 2018. But one adaptation stands out: In 1981, the Federal Highway Research Institute revised the “Autobahn-Schrift” for use in road traffic. The Frankfurt Master Signmaker, Adolf Gropp focused on improving legibility for wayfinding systems and display sizes. The tracking was adjusted and the recommendation for the wide width was dropped altogether. As a result it largely disappeared from the West German street scene.

In the GDR, it became more visually humanistic from 1978 onwards, as East Germany gradually switched to GIL, a modified Gill Sans. Its legibility resulted from open, easy-to-read letters and easily distinguishable numerals.

At the beginning of the 1980s, under the direction of Günther Gerhard Lange, the Berlin type foundry, Berthold, developed a version of the standardized typeface for phototypesetting. This was before Linotype and Adobe cooperated in 1990 to produce the first digital publication of PostScript fonts, which were defined in the standard as the medium and narrow versions.

With this new availability, the graphic significance of the DIN type also gained momentum. More and more designers turned to the typeface for its straightforward, constructed and timeless aesthetic.

In 1995, Erik Spiekermann recognized the growing trend and demand for DIN and so he suggested that Albert-Jan Pool redraw the typeface as FF DIN for his Berlin-based label FontFont. With the help of Achaz Reuß, Albert-Jan Pool expanded it to five weights and also extended its language support. Pool succeeded in improving the legibility of continuous text without sacrificing the industrial rawness of the design. To achieve this, he drew the horizontal strokes thinner and made the curves and their transitions to straight lines smoother. Some characters were made rounder, and terminals of the letters, such as c or s, were finished with diagonal ends. Also the x-height increased with the width of the stroke. For individual expression there are alternative round dots, oldstyle figures and a single-storey a. Pool’s interpretation is still considered by many today, as the best version of DIN.

After FF DIN was further developed with italics and condensed widths, a veritable DIN boom began at the start of the millennium. DIN became a typographic icon and still shapes the graphic design in many parts of the world today. Not only was it used for a wide variety of projects, it was also followed by an increasing number of interpretations of the basic form. With each new interpretation, the trend was refueled.

Among the most interesting interpretations are those by Parachute (PF Din, 2002, free interpretation, largest extension), Linotype (DIN Next, 2008, soft overall impression), Paratype (DIN 2014, 2014), Dharma Type (Compasse, 2014, free interpretation), Astype (Vtg Stencil DIN, 2016, stencil variant), Type-Ø-Tones (DINosaur, 2016, based on upright standard typeface DIN 17), Revolver Type (Dinamit, 2017, based on Breitschrift), Microsoft (Bahnschrift, 2017; Grandview, 2021, first variable version, Uniwidth) and Fontsmith (FS Industrie, 2018, free interpretation).

The history of the DIN typeface is a history of continual revisions, with each interpretation adding a new color to the concept.

We believe there are still colors missing in the DIN font spectrum. As a Berlin-based foundry, we feel its our calling to bring out these nuances in order to strengthen its vitality. And where better place to rethink and reimagine this German original than in the city of its origin. At the same time, we want to give a dynamic answer to a dynamic world. To achieve this, we started with the original construction and combined the requirements of the digital world with a modern idea of the German art of engineering.

Just like at the beginning of Berlin’s Standard typeface history, the technical conditions that had arisen shortly before its inception were decisive influencing factors. Yet whereas 100 years ago, the focus was on reproducibility, today the factors that influenced our own design decisions are variable fonts. When approaching our design, we placed this technology at the center of our consideration.

In order to make the best possible use of the synergies of design and technology, the designers Hendrik Weber (type director of the top agency KMS Team) and Andreas Frohloff (freelance type director) worked hand in hand with Fontwerk’s Font Engineer, Olli Meier, who also contributed ideas and took on design tasks. The variable width (especially the Condensed and Wide widths) became style-defining in many respects. As a result, the normal width appears more neutral than other DINs derived from the basic form.

The most difficult question to answer was how far one could deviate from the norm. We discarded courageous yet appealing explorations that threatened to lose the concise mix of geometric construction and openness. The typeface should remain a DIN – in all its simplicity and timelessness. The key to its design is its strict geometry and letters, which hang together like a chain.

Nevertheless, the desire for an elegant touch germinated in us, Andreas Frohloff had the brilliant idea: “All vertical curves, such as the sides of the o, d or g, are round, have no straight lines and swing easily.” The curves are not eye-catching, but they give the typeface the desired touch of elegance. With these subtle organic forms and a balanced spacing, the business-like character is preserved and we are convinced that we have nevertheless created an independent and sustainable design.

However, the most obvious unique selling point of Neue DIN is the stringent interplay of nine weights (Thin–Black) and nine widths (XXCondensed, XCondensed, Condensed, SemiCondensed, Normal, SemiWide, Wide, XWide, XXWide). The enormous bandwidth paired with the flexibility of the Variable Fonts technology creates a thoroughly new DIN feeling, also because the extreme widths feel unfamiliar at first. But with DIN 1451’s very own engineering approach, they are not only consistent, they are also great fun to use. Maintaining the robust industrial feel in these areas was one of the biggest challenges.

Olli Meier explains the decision for nine widths as follows: “Rethinking DIN also means starting from the web and responsive environments and designing it in such a way that it works smoothly in CSS”. That is why the 81 sections correspond to those specified in the CSS specification (Cascading Style Sheets: Language for designing electronic documents, e.g. on the web).

The specification provides for a matrix in which the widths of a font lie on the x-axis and the stroke widths on the y-axis. Here, the Thin cut has a value of 100, the Regular one of 400 and the Black one of 900. The Normal width is 100 percent, the Condensed 75 and the Wide 150 percent. Condensed Thin therefore has a value of 75 on the x-axis and 100 on the y-axis. If you change the width, the line width value remains at 100. In the static world, however, one often makes an optical balance, for example, making the narrow weights lighter and the wide ones bolder. Neue DIN offers 100% CSS compatibility, just as Ludwig Goller’s engineers would probably have implemented it today.

More subtle design differences to its predecessors can be seen in the compact overall impression and the clear reinterpretation of the stroke course, which appears more rigorous and more standardized. Due to the technical orientation of the body shapes, we drew broad counters. We made characters like t, f, r and 1 a little wider. Alternative forms for Q, a, u, r, l, 6, 7, and 9, round dots and arrows, numerals in circles and squares complete the variable overall picture.

A special feature — recently proposed by Christoph Koeberlin — is an expansion of the Standard Latin character set, which now includes an additional 100 languages that have often been overlooked. Inspired by his initiative, Neue DIN can be used by at least 3 billion people.

In December 2023, we gave the typeface its first update. It already supports what German authorities will be required to do by November 2024 when DIN 91379 comes into force. Put simply DIN 91379 is a standard that will require them to recognize and machine-read a normative subset of the Latin Unicode character set in the exchange of data between authorities or with citizens and business. This means that finally, the names of people (İlkay Gündoğan, Pippi Långstrump, Lech Wałęsa, …) and companies (Kärcher, İşbank, Kværner, …) will be securely processed electronically and spelled correctly throughout Europe.

Even when it comes to italics, we are breaking new ground in terms of DIN fonts. In the summer of 2025, we added not ‘only’ the 81 normal oblique fonts, but also the same number of backslanted variants. These Retalics offer novel possibilities in display contexts, for example. This latest update increases the number of static fonts to a whopping 243. For those who prefer a more manageable approach, the variable font has been given a third axis for slanting in both directions.

OFFLINE: Norms: DIN 1451; 1949, 1987, 2018; DIN 16, 1949; DIN 17, 1949; TGL 1451, 1962; TGL 16, 1961; TGL 17, 1961; Jan Middendorp, Erik Spiekermann – Made with FontFont, FontShop International, BIS Publishers 2006; Paul McNeil – The Visual History of Type, Laurence King Publishing Ltd. 2017; Stephen Coles – The Anatomy of Type: A Graphic Guide to 100 Typefaces, Harper Design 2012; Preußische Staatsbahnverwaltung – Dienstvorschrift über Anstrich, Bezeichnung und Nummerung der Wagen, H. G. Hermann, Berlin 1906; Wolfgang Diener – Anstrich und Bezeichnung von Güter- und Dienstwagen, Das äussere Erscheinungsbild deutscher Güterwagen von 1864 bis heute, Verlag Dr. Bernhard Abend 1992; Deutscher Normenausschuß Berlin W 15 – DIN Taschenbuch 2 ‘Zeichnungsnormen’, 1950; Ludwig Goller – DIN Normenheft 5 ‘Groteskschriften DIN 1451’, Deutscher Normenausschuß Berlin W 15, 1949; Jürgen Siebert, Claudia Guminski – 100 beste Schriften, FontShop AG, Berlin 2007; Antje Dohmann – DIN mit Swing (PAGE 10.22), Ebner Media Group GmbH & Co. KG, Hamburg 2022 | ONLINE: din.de, 2022; Yves Peters – FF DIN: Eine FontFont-Erfolgsgeschichte, 2015; Albert-Jan Pool – FF DIN Round – Digitale Blockschrift, Eine Broschüre zur Geschichte runder serifenloser Schriften und zur Entstehung der FF DIN Round. 2010; Dirk Vorwerk – Zwei, die sich getroffen haben, um Charakter zu entwickeln, 2019; Typografie.info – Font-Wiki: Gill Sans von Eric Gill, 2013; Typografie.info – Font-Wiki: DIN 1451 von Ludwig Goller und andere, 2013; Wikipedia: Gill Sans, 2022; Wikipedia: DIN 1451 (Eng), 2022; Wikipedia: DIN 1451 (De), 2022; Wikipedia: Normenliste DIN 1 bis DIN 499, 2022; Wikipedia: FF DIN, 2022; Identifont, 2022; Fontsinuse.com, 2022; Luc Devroye – DIN, 2022; beuth.de, 2022; Microsoft Typography – OS/2 and Windows Metrics Table, 2022; W3Schools – CSS font-stretch Property, 2022

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The driving force of the campaign were three interchanging one-liners, set in the custom designed font “Change”. Its name says it all: Berlin is changing, and the world should know about it. For 12 years, Change served as the city’s brand typeface. Now Change is finally allowed to unfold its potential – optimized and expanded – for the benefit of all brands and projects that are in need of renewal or quite simply a change.

At the start of the image campaign, the Senate invested eleven million euros to establish the motto “Be Berlin” and to improve citizens’ identification with their city. From 2009 onwards, “Be Berlin” was drummed up throughout Germany and then in 50 different countries.

As is usual with large-scale marketing campaigns in Germany, this particular initiative was also accompanied by some grumbling and at times a rather negative reaction. The market research institute Forsa suggested that the motto was not accepted by Berliners because they did not understand it. The Governing Mayor Klaus Wowereit was also awarded the “Language Prankster of the Year” for the campaign. Agencies filed complaints, ranging from accusations of plagiarism to charges of nepotism. The German Taxpayers Federation also named the campaign as a “waste of taxpayers’ money” in its “Black Book 2008”.

Yet, “Be Berlin” remained the official slogan of the capital up until 2020. The follow-up campaign “Wir sind ein Berlin” (We are one Berlin) has not caught on in the city, even after two years, which demonstrates that a lot went right with “Be Berlin”. It comes as no surprise, as the original initiative was spearheaded by a number of top agencies including Embassy, Fuenfwerken, WE DO communication and a number of others. It was also supported by committed local institutions such as Berlin Partner, Goethe Institute and Berlin Chamber of Industry and Commerce, and was co-financed by many well-known and well-established companies such as Bayer, Pfizer, BMW, Siemens, to name a few.

But the figures speak even more clearly for the success of the campaign. From 2008 to 2019, the number of overnight stays in Berlin rose from 17.8 to 34.1 million (+ 92 percent, almost a doubling). The number of taxable businesses rose from 133 thousand to 168 thousand (+ 28 percent) in the same period. The city’s gross domestic product rose from 99 billion euros to 157 billion (+ 59 percent). And the city’s population grew from 3.43 million to 3.67 million (+ 7 percent) within the twelve years of the launch of the campaign.

Today, Berlin is perceived, both nationally and internationally, as an attractive business location. The city’s image attracts talent, entrepreneurs and investors from across the world. In 2019, the capital’s startups received 3.69 billion euros in 262 financing rounds. This meant that Berlin was once again able to defend its title as Germany’s startup capital, as three out of five euros invested in startups ended up here.

A defining factor in the Be Berlin campaign that contributed to its success, was that the focus was not on the city of Berlin, but on its people and their diverse lifestyles. For this, Embassy developed the speech bubble as a visual frame, with three one-liners in the center. During the launch phase, celebrities such as the star chef Tim Raue and the pupils from the Rütli School wrote the texts for the speech bubbles; later, Berliners contributed their own ideas.

The Berlin campaign got its unmistakable profile from a specially developed typeface. For the design, Fuenfwerken engaged the experienced type designer Alessio Leonardi. His first drafts already contained the unmistakable characteristics of the later extended family: the strong horizontal emphasis, curved diagonals in selected letters, broken stems in the italics as well as the contrasting interplay of angular and round elements.

The name for the Berlin typeface came about almost automatically. “Change” refers both to the transformation of a vital big city and to the visual characteristics of the typeface. Alessio Leonardi: “The letters are not static, yet they produce a calm text image. Change is unconventional and has many peculiar details, but looks immediately familiar. It is not perfect, just as a living city is never perfect. Change is open to the new, it embodies change and is itself part of change.”

The original draft, Change Letter, with which the Berlin campaign was launched, has a special significance. With its contrasting interplay of hardness and subtlety, it lends emphasis to texts and headlines. The conically shaped strokes and angled diagonals in the letters A, M, V, W, v and w make it unmistakable. The typewriter look, enriched with slab serifs, carries the three-line core messages of the campaign and becomes a set piece for all Berliners. With three fixed letter widths, it is located between monospaced and proportional typefaces and makes the texts it is set in appear strong and self-confident.

The desire of the Governing Mayor of Berlin to expand the use of Change across all of the city’s general communication, led to the development of Change Sans a year later. Change Sans became the second typeface in the family with a somewhat more neutral appearance, but with the same features as Letter: Regular, Bold, Italic and Bold Italic. In 2010, it was expanded with lighter and bolder weights. As its designer says: “Change Sans was developed for longer texts, with proportional widths, the basic cut slightly lighter and narrower. This gives texts a pleasant gray value for better reading and increases the contrast between Regular and Bold. The italics are also high-contrast. Some vertical bars are curved. The 11° slant makes them fast and rhythmic.”

Another unusual feature of Change is that the tracking is reduced as the stroke width increases. This means that a bold cut like ExtraBlack takes up less space than a thin cut like Hairline. At the same time, a more harmonious white space of the counters and the spacing is achieved.

As a Berlin-based foundry, we wanted to work with Alessio Leonardi to comprehensively revise and expand this special artifact of regional type culture and to finally make it available to designers worldwide. In the rather rigid official design environment, the potential of Change has never been truly reached. Now it can show the world what it can do.

The focus of our optimization was initially on the Change (Sans) family, for which we expanded the number of weights from five to eleven (insert Spinal Tap joke here), coordinated them better and pushed the limits of the shapes with new extremes in favor of greater flexibility: Hairline, Thin, ExtraLight, Light, Regular, Medium, SemiBold, Bold, ExtraBold, Black and ExtraBlack. In order to control the letters precisely, we rebuilt the entire family on the basis of three masters with modern tools and taking into account increased demands. With the Variable Fonts, which are now available for the first time, all nuances of additional stroke widths between the extremes of Hairline and ExtraBlack can be set.

As part of its rebirth, the character set of Change has also been enlarged. This also applies to the glyphs for non-Latin languages, which were checked and tested by Amélie Bonet (Cyrillic and Greek) and Donny Truong (Vietnamese). Finally, small caps across all weights extend the typographic variety. We plan to give Change Letter the same treatment at a later date, enriching the family with a completely new monospace variant as well as pictogram fonts. The latter are already in use sporadically on our website fontwerk.com.

We are exceptionally excited to see how this Berlin plant will bloom in other parts of the world.

Change yourself

Nice has many faces: open, elegant, expressive, compact, robust, but it never looks boring. It is as lively as possible in order to convey messages in a serious and credible way. Its name speaks for itself – friendly in appearance, charming in expression and pleasant in use.

Drawing from its baroque ancestors, it takes only the most important essences: the expressiveness, the contrast between severity and warmth, the playfulness of the italics, the subtle quirkiness. By softening typical decorative elements such as sprawling curves, twisted drops or idiosyncratic serifs and carefully incorporating them into a modern framework, its designer Jan Fromm places its historical formal language in a contemporary context. Many peculiarities of the typefaces of that time compete with today’s reading habits. Therefore, oversized capitals, as in the case of a Baskerville, or the exuberant richness of form of a Fleischmann Italic were consciously avoided.

Nice is therefore not a revival. Instead, the attributes of classical baroque typefaces that still make sense today have been tailored to a refreshingly modern text font. Its availability as a variable font (which is included in the Collection package) makes its discreet historical borrowings almost completely unrecognizable.

During the design process, which lasted several years, Jan Fromm was continuously guided by three objectives: clarity, liveliness and legibility. The optical sizes allow a high degree of application-specific optimizations. For example, a generous x-height and open forms allow the small optical sizes of Text and Micro to be read quickly and fluently. The fact that the typeface remains lively despite its efficiency is due to its humanistic characteristics and many details: accentuated vertical serifs (e.g. C, E, T), subtly curved horizontal serifs, strong drops, dots and accents, elements with a handwritten character (Q, &, £), inktraps (in small optical sizes) and different slanted angles in the italics.

In contrast to historically oriented text faces, which usually contain oldstyle numerals, Jan Fromm opted for proportional lining figures, as these work better in the large optical sizes of Headline and Poster. Many readers consider oldstyle figures to look too playful in such large and short use cases. In light of the superfamily’s syndetic variability, this decision has also been transferred to Nice Text and Nice Micro. To make lining figures suitable for this purpose, the numerals were made somewhat narrower. This way, they fit perfectly in continuous texts and convince in responsive environments.

Alongside the different types of numerals, the family members Poster, Headline, Text and Micro and the multiple and varied weights (from ExtraLight to Black), Nice is equipped with a rich typographic repertoire of small caps, arrows and symbols. Whether used in editorial design, fashion, branding or packaging – Nice always cuts a fine figure.

The designer himself recommends using Micro for font sizes from about 6 to 9pt, Text from about 9 to 16pt, Headline up to about 48pt and Poster for larger applications. But, of course, that is just a suggestion …

The versatility and expressive nature of Nice will be further expanded with the planned addition of more widths (Condensed and Extended), as well as language extensions such as Cyrillic, Greek and Vietnamese. Corresponding styles such as Sans, Mono and perhaps even Slab, Semi Sans or even Script are also conceivable. After all, these genres also deserve a ‘nice’ clarity, liveliness and legibility.

Try Nice

Try Nice

From the outset, Pangea included European Latin, Greek, Extended Cyrillic (including overlooked languages such as Kyrgyz or Bashkir) and Vietnamese as well as characters for the transcription of Arabic and Sanskrit. The next language extension milestones planned are Hebrew and Arabic (Persian, Urdu, Dari as well as Pashto).

Designer Christoph Koeberlin sees Pangea as an inclusive typeface family. Its name refers to his approach of considering different cultures and continents as part of a common whole. His continuous language extensions challenge Western conventions, as more often than not successful typefaces usually only represent the alphabets of Europe and America. Pangea Afrikan marks an important milestone in this respect: it adds Latin African to its language toolbox. Providing support for languages including Hausa, Yoruba, Igbo, Lingala, Mende, and Umbundu, as well as some indigenous North American languages such as Lushootseed and Navajo–the languages of over 430 million people.

Fontwerk’s mission is to make typography affordable and accessible to all. We don’t want to make extensive language support like Cyrillic, Greek or Arabic an expensive additional barrier or obstacle to great typography. With this comprehensive update, we even go one big step further based on Christoph’s suggestion: Pangea Afrikan is permanently free of charge and included in the Base License! We hope that brands, agencies and individual designers will be able to benefit from this.

Stylistically, the extension remains true to the tried and tested Pangea formula: the space-saving compactness of the narrow typefaces of the mid-20th Century is transferred to a straightforward, geometric sans serif. That means a stately x-height, ascenders that correspond to the capital letters, and letters that are hardly open. The font owes its finely balanced lightness to diagonal ends and round dots. With two optical sizes, Pangea Afrikan and Pangea Afrikan Text, something that is rather rare in the geometric genre, users get enormous flexibility and design consequence.

This update does not however, mean the end of the language extension. Together with local designers, additional Non-Latin alphabets such as N’Ko or Geʽez are in the works. These will also be available to existing and future customers at no cost. Until then, however, a little patience is required and it is important to trust the Tanzanian proverb ‘Haraka Haraka haina baraka’ (Hurry hurry has no blessings).

In December 2025, we introduced our fair regional pricing. Based on the World Bank purchasing power parity data, this significantly reduces font licensing fees for many regions of the world, as they are more realistically aligned with individual living costs and also take into account the relationship between exchange rates and price levels between different countries. African countries in particular benefit from this new model.

However, this removes the key reason behind the idea of Pangea Afrikan. With the free Base License, we wanted to simplify access to high-quality fonts for brands, agencies, and designers on the continent. We believe that this is also achieved with the regional price adjustment.

Pangea has also undergone four significant updates since the release of its African counterpart and continues to be expanded and updated (we’re currently on version 3.02), while Pangea Afrikan is still available in version 1.00. Expanding and updating our fastest-growing typeface family to a comparable extent—especially with regard to the condensed extension—has proven difficult. The ‘large’ Pangea now supports all (!) Latin characters, as well as Arabic, which is spoken in many regions of Africa. With its linguistic enhancements and technical improvements, it is the preferred version. For these reasons, we will be discontinuing the Pangea Afrikan project as a standalone family of fonts.

We hope that this step will help the idea of supporting African storytelling more than before. However, if this makes things more difficult for anyone, please contact us. Together we will find a solution to make it work.

Try Pangea

Further information

In his blog, Christoph describes the genesis of this project in more detail and makes suggestions for a Latin character set that goes beyond the borders of Europe and the Americas.

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It’s therefore hardly surprising that many fonts that are rooted in these classical forms look rather similar. Although the construction of West follows in the same geometric tradition, it achieves independence and its own distinct character. It has a simple yet sophisticated formula: visually similar forms do not repeat.

Combining conciseness and pragmatism, it presents itself as timelessly modern but has its roots firmly planted in the practicality and functionality of classical modernism. West succeeds in reinterpreting the concept of geometric sans serifs in an original way. Behind its apparent lightness lie a multitude of different design decisions by its designer Daniel Perraudin.

In order to maintain a harmonious canon of shapes and to do justice to its construction and symmetry, he varied individual letter widths (e.g. a narrow a and s in contrast to the wide b, n and J). He emphasized this unique character further with unusual glyphs such as W, t, f, 2, the alternative forms of the italic Q, the diagonal endings or angular dots. The characters beautifully oscillate between Art Deco influences (e.g. M, N, V, 3) and more technoid, monospaced influences of the nineties (e.g. f, alternative r) as well as the classical effect of fully reduced geometric grotesques (e.g. t, d, g, C, G, 9). All together, these design idiosyncrasies result in a compelling, contemporary mix.

The range of West is also something rather special in the geometric genre: nine font weights ranging from Hairline to Black, matching italics as well as variable fonts that are all included in the Complete Package, giving the user full flexibility, which is perfect for branding and editorial projects.

Thanks to the exceptionally open “un-compact” finish, West is recommended not only for display use but also for smaller text or for wayfinding or signage systems. This has already been put into practice for the wayfinding system in the Old Masters Gallery in Dresden, where individual icons were designed, which were then adopted into the present fonts and adapted to the respective stroke width.

Test West!

However, when it actually comes down to it, in reality they just want their own version of a Neo-Grotesque in the style of Helvetica® or Akzidenz Grotesk®.

Erik Spiekermann, Anja Meiners and Ralph du Carrois are all too familiar with client briefings of this kind and have regularly found themselves working on a variation of the omnipresent Neo-Grotesque. However, each time, they aspired to replace the classics with significantly better concepts – with timeless yet forward-looking alternatives that help the simple underlying design to gain more character with surprising, sometimes experimental nuances.

Case is the essence of these corporate font projects. Spiekermann, Meiners and du Carrois left out everything that they felt was unnecessary in the world’s most popular typeface genre but made sure to keep the best bits. Building on this magical concentrate, they added new ideas and conceptual solutions for a modern sans serif.

The result is the missing element in an otherwise strained and bloated font category: A typeface whose matter-of-fact personality looks familiar and creates trust, but at the same time provides fresh inspiration with individual features making it perfect for strong brand building. Case is less neutral than its peers and stands out from them with greater recognition.

The most striking feature of Case is already reflected in its name. Derived from the systematic feature of terminating characters, such as c, a, s, e and their relatives, including capital letters, small caps and unicase characters, each at its own height. This design decision emphasizes the horizontal, almost compulsively forcing harmony and allowing for extremely tight setting and experimental applications.

As the weight increases, this feature becomes more dominant, right up to ExtraBlack, which uncompromisingly takes it to the extreme. This deliberately reverses the harmony into the opposite and allows logos, wordmarks and headlines to be designed more concisely. Since the name of a typeface should already introduce its character and almost all fonts (co)designed by Erik Spiekermann get by with four letters anyway, the naming almost came naturally.

Another strength of Case is its remarkable legibility. This is mainly due to its three optical sizes: the core family which is great for most applications, especially larger use, Case Text which works well for more extensive content and Case Micro which is intended for small text. Depending on the application, it can still guarantee good legibility at a font size of 4pt; in some cases, Micro even works below this.

The secret of optical sizes lies in the possibility of making individual characters more legible, and that the desired visual impression of a font can be maintained across all font sizes. The effect in a headline is then identical to that of a footnote. Digital environments especially benefit from this adaptability as the font sizes and styles can be displayed differently (responsively) when viewed on small smartphones or large displays.

In the case of Case (sorry for that), the differences between the three family members lie in their spacing. In comparison to the two versions for text applications, the main family’s spacing is narrow, whereas Text is wider and Micro has the widest. For better legibility, both Case Text and Case Micro have an l with a ‘foot’ and slightly more open shapes than their bigger sister. The Micro has a higher x-height, more distinguishable character forms (r, i, j), wider glyphs (f, t) as well as significant contrast at the joints of the stems and bows.

Strikingly, these concise forms have been the reason for using Micro large on posters or banners (e.g. here). Here, the flexibility of the type system is emphasized in an unexpected place.

The real italics are a truly unique feature. In the genre of Neo-Grotesques, they are a rare occurrence in such a concise form. Many type designers are usually satisfied with obliques, which are merely slanted italics that have not been specially designed. Yet with real italics many common brand values can be conveyed through this almost organic design, e.g. optimistic, human, lively, transparent, friendly, distinctive, creative, harmonious or elegant. The angle of inclination also supports trust in the brand, as it corresponds to that of the well-known classics Helvetica®, Univers® or Akzidenz Grotesk® (12°).

The variable fonts, which oscillate between weights and three optical sizes, also deserve attention. One upright and one italic variable font are included in the Superfamily package, at no extra cost.

In addition, the number of characters has also doubled. Behind this enormous increase is the extended language support which now includes support for Cyrillic, Greek and Vietnamese, the support of Latin languages of Africa and the new unicase feature.

Although the idea of combining uppercase and lowercase letterforms with the same letter height and no ascenders or descenders was initially conceived as a fun play on words (UniCASE), the design and engineering team quickly excelled in designing, and later the marketing team, when applying this typographic feature to the concept. To keep the extended family manageable, this design option was integrated as an OpenType feature (Stylistic Set 2).

The plethora of far-reaching revisions and extensions result in a new, exceptionally versatile and completely revamped version of the typeface that can confidently keep up with the ever-growing demands of complex branding projects. If that wasn’t enough – due to the clear, neutral design, Case offers the perfect foundation for individual adaptations and custom designs.

Try Case

(Helvetica and Univers are trademarks of Monotype registered in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and may be registered in certain other jurisdictions. Akzidenz-Grotesk is a trademark of Berthold Types Limited registered in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and may be registered in certain other jurisdictions. Unless otherwise stated, the images used are subject to Unsplash licenses.)