Save
space
For example Écono Sans
The most space-saving sans serif
Even the name of the font implies its function: French for the infinitive “to save” is “économiser.”
Now if that doesn’t sound good…
This font saves more space
than any of its kind!
-
Slim proportions,
but not “condensed”
-
Characters which nearly touch
-
Sparse ascenders and descenders
-
Distinct forms
In practice, there are always situations in which as much information as possible has to be positioned in as little space as possible.
How close to each other can the characters of a font get? Theoretically, as close as you want. But obviously, the words should still be legible. And as any designer knows, body clearance of characters also depends on other parameters such as point size and line spacing.
The ingoFont Écono Sans is made for exactly this purpose.
Results of a comparison °:
With Écono Sans you gain approximately 20% more text in a line than with Tahoma, and even still more than 10% compared to Helvetica Neue, not to mention the old “normal” Helvetica…
° In order to truly compare, the fonts were measured up to the same visual size, i.e. Écono Sans 12 pts, Avenir Next 12.5 pts, Bell Centennial 12.5 pts, Helvetica 11 pts, Tahoma 11 pts.
The shapes of the upper and lower case letters are completely matter-of-fact, the way a modern font has got to be.
The letters c, e, and s are wide open to their neighbors.
An especially distinguished trait of this font is the design of the “triangular” characters v, w, y, x, k, z and A, V, W, Y, Z, K, X, M, N.
And the open form of B, R and P is also not typical in a sans serif.
The distance between letters is kept tight and often the characters nearly touch, but only nearly.
In addition to the “normal figures,” Écono Sans also includes tabular figures with unvarying width as well as ligatures (character connections). Among the ligatures, the double mm is especially unusual and is hardly familiar, but can contribute greatly to saving space without catching the reader’s eye.
Tabular figures and ligatures can be turned on and off by means of the corresponding Open Type functions of the user program.
For example
Behrens-Schrift
Peter Behrens’ renowned art nouveau type
from 1902
Newly revised and neatly digitalized.
In 1902, Peter Behrens (1869—1940), architect, designer and typographer, created a new ”German“ type which became very successful very quickly for the Rudhard’sche Gießerei (foundry which later became Gebr. Klingspor AG) in Offenbach am Main. It served, for example, as the official German type for the world expositions in 1904 and 1910.
Behrens’ Typeface is still sought after as is proven, at the very least, by a few poorly digitalized free fonts which can be found on the WWW.
A project about the modern use of historical industrial buildings in Germany motivated me to take a closer look at the work of Peter Behrens. With the Behrens-Schrift, the ideal display type exists; unfortunately, it can only be found in an absolutely unacceptable quality.
Even D. Stempel GmbH, which still today casts the types of the former Gebr. Klingspor AG (formerly Rudhardsche Gießerei) for manual typesetting, shows in a digitalized specimen sheet of typefaces a neat version of the Behrens-Schrift, but still not one which meets today’s quality standards. Reason enough for ingoFonts to create the perfect Behrens-Schrift.
Voilà — here it is: the new, revised, original Behrens-Schrift from 1902, first newly and neatly drawn and digitalized in detail, and then expanded for all European languages with the Latin font system.
Behrens himself writes about the development of this type ”...For the actual form of my type, I took the technical principle of the Gothic script, the stroke of the quill feather. The proportions of height and width and the boldness of the strokes of the Gothic letters were also decisive for me in producing a German character. A cohesive character could be hoped for by avoiding all non-necessities and by strictly carrying out the design principle of holding the quill at an angle…“ °
° from: Jeremy Aynsley,
Grafik-Design in Deutschland
1890 – 1945,
Verlag Hermann Schmidt,
Mainz 2000
With the OpenType-Functions ligatures, discretional ligatures, historical forms and stylistic alternates, non-standard ligatures are also accessible, the so-called long s and alternative forms for d, x, z and H, L.
When using “long s,” you must ensure the correct use of the rules for the Fraktur font: “round s” is always at the end of the word, also in compound words. For those of you who want to be even more correct, read the corresponding article in Wikipedia.
By the way, when “long s” is activated, the typographically correct “round s” is automatically placed at the end of the word so that you need only pay attention to the correct s on syllable endings within words.
In general, blackletter fonts require considerably less space than Roman typefaces. However, more modern typefaces such as sans serifs also require considerably more space.
The Behrens-Schrift is a hybrid form derived from Gothic textura. Its forms and proportions have been brought closer to those of Antiqua.
It is therefore still easy to read today.
... a reason to consider the Behrens-Schrift when there is not enough space available.
Peter Behrens also drew matching ornaments for his typeface — we have likewise carefully revised these decorative touches and arranged them into a font.
For example Desphalia
A classic “American”
sans serif
with a kink
The design of Desphalia is based on a magazine font.
For this reason, it has a comparatively narrow spacing but is still very legible.
Desphalia belongs to the kind of sans serif fonts that were created in the 19th century.
You could also name it
“American Gothic”, a sans serif
in the style of fonts like Franklin Gothic, News Gothic and similar.
Above all, the high x-height characterizes this typeface style, as do the identical heights of uppercase and ascenders.
However, I allowed myself a few peculiarities ;-)
On the one hand, there is the gently sloping horizontal middle line on letters such as H, E, F, A and e. The M also got gently slanted sides. Some of the lower-case letters have an up- or down-stroke: a d m n p u. This "kink" on the shaft also serves to better distinguish the small l from the capital I — as can be seen clearly with the term »Illinois«.
In keeping with the tradition of American typefaces, Desphalia does not have a true italic. Rather, the letters of the “Italic” have the same character forms as the normal upright variant, but in oblique — and so it is not called “Italic” but “Oblique”.
The figures are optionally available as
tabular figures, proportional lining figures or old style figures.
Style Set 01
Another American peculiarity is the capital I with dashes above and below. It is included in the Desphalia as an alternate character form. An alternative small l with the “kink” in the ascender is also included — as is a y with the “kink” in the descender.
Style Set 02
The corresponding “straight” forms a d l m n p u without the break are included as alternatives in a separate style set.
Small caps
Small caps are uppercase letters that are optically the same size as lowercase letters. They offer a very classy way of emphasis.
Font family
Desphalia is available in the widths Condensed,Normal and Expanded, the weights include Thin, Light, Book, Bold, Black.
Using the variable font, all intermediate levels can be freely selected.
For example
DeFonte
Disimproved
by the blur filter
The underlying typeface is ”Helvetica“,
the only true ”run-of-the-mill“ typeface
of the twentieth century.
The distorted principle used simulates
the photographic effect of halation
and/or overexposure.
The light typestyle, DeFonte Léger,
nearly breaks on the thin points,
whereas on those points where the
lines meet or cross, dark spots remain. The characters are ”nibbled at“ from
the inner and outer brightness.
On the normal and semibold typestyles, DeFonte Normale and DeFonte Demi Gras, the effect is limited almost exclusively to the end strokes and corners, which appears to be strongly rounded off.
The bold version DeFonte Gros
is especially attractive. As a result of ”overexposure“, counters (internal spaces) are closed in, while characters become blurred and turn into spots; new characteristic forms are created which are astoundingly legible.
Similar to Helvetica, DeFonte also has a very narrow typographic appearance. However, it is not about optimum legibility here either.
Some of the letters are even closer together, to the point of overlapping.
As a result, DeFonte requires even less space, but is only of limited use for longer texts.
