A handwritten ”font for technicians“ from ca. 1900; very geometrical, rigid forms borrowed from the typical characteristics of Jugendstil / Art Nouveau

ingoFonts has not only digitized this beautiful typeface, we have also extended it to a whole family.

This script is found in a magazine from the Otto Maier publishing house, Ravensburg, which was issued sometime in the years shortly before WWI.
The original copy, produced by means of a galvanized plate, is just 7 centimeters wide. It served as the model for technical professions in which, at that time, the captions of drawings were still done by hand.

In »Maier’s Alte Nr. 8« special attention was given to ensure the ”uneven“ edges, typical of handwritten script, remained effectively noticeable even in the digitized form. As a result, this ”technical“ font retains a handmade touch, while »Maier’s Neue Nr. 8« is the clean version with exact contours.

The Art Nouveau forms, which are characteristic for the period of origin around the turn of the century around 1900, look especially pretty. The high degree of abstraction also seems strange in Maier's No. 8, especially when the age of the original is known. It is generally assumed that it was not until the Bauhaus in the late 1920s that such "modern" typefaces were created. Maier's No. 8 is a generation older! So many of today's supposedly "ultramodern" typefaces look quite old in comparison.