In the 1920s the Viennese government decided to standardize the street signs across the city. Since then, around 7,000 streets and squares in the Austrian capital have been labeled with white-on-blue enamel plates. A typeface was especially constructed for the purpose – but we don’t know by whom. It was available in a Heavy and a Bold Condensed version, to support short street names like Gaußplatz, as well as longer names like Wolfgang-Mühlwanger-Straße. Since the 1970s, phototypesetting has been used to produce the plates, which allows the enamel producer to also stretch the typeface to the perfect length (and which kind of hurts sometimes). As the years went by, the typeface was adopted and redrawn by several enamel factories, who each wanted a part of the cake. These adaptations lead to variations on the design, and to the fact that there isn’t a Viennese street sign font but 16 – in part severely – different versions, which we found in our research (bastards not included).

Henriette is not a digitization of any of those versions; rather, it is influenced by all of them. In the end, it is another approach on the typeface that we love for its uniqueness, in the otherwise slender typographic history of our country.

Henriette was developed by Michael Hochleiter, creator of the TDC award winning didone family Ingeborg. Henriette is his second big type family. It consists of 30 styles including 5 weights, Condensed and Compressed widths and accopanying Italics. We also didn’t scimp on OpenType features: All the Romans include a set of Small Caps, the Italics Swash Caps. All weights have ligatures, alternate glyphs, fractions, arrows and several figure styles. In addition to that Henriette comes with a Frames font, that is included with every purchased font.

To show you a glimpse of what Henriette can do, we printed a specimen catalog for your (and our own) pleasure. Its heart is masterly offset printed on Lenzing recycling paper and has a letterpressed cover bringing tears to typographers eyes! Drop us a line, and we are happy to send you a specimen.

By the way: We decided to give away one weight for free. The biggest and most classic. Henriette Black. We hope that this bird will make some rounds, and we can’t wait to see it in use! If you want to make us happy and share your work on our website, send us images of real life Henriette projects!

All other weights start at 60 Euros (80 USD), include the frames font and are available right now! Gain flexibility and save real money by buying a package or the whole family.

About two weeks ago DRUPA – the international fair trade for print and paper – was opened in Dusseldorf, Germany. As being one of the recycling papermakers world-wide our client Lenzing Paper had to be represented characteristically with all its values and benefits. We desgined the exhibition stand together with architect Anna Kovacs (Nana Architektur).

She developed the paper booth, using almost only Lenzing products. Key feature and focus of the concept was the front built of stacked paper. Sad to say that exactly this part had to be cancelled due to time and fire prevention reasons. So we had to be flexible and change a few things in the concept, doing our best to save as much charming details as possible.

Above the rendering of the concept.

Then, two weeks ago I went to Dusseldorf for the build up. And if you think everything’s finished the day before the opening, … well, … of course not. But it’s also a nice experience assisting at the construction site, arranging paper and drinks in the storage, and seeing everything getting finished step by step. Especially the guys of druckbar did a great gob, pasting all the walls with our graphics. Thank you Patrick and Lorenz.

The booth in the booth was a nice seperation of the information. On the outside you we’re attracted by the huge images and the Post-It stools Nana Architektur designed.

Inside the stand you had detailed information about Lenzing – the history, the location, paper making process, products, …. The visitors also had time and space to flick through the new imagefolder we recently designed.

24 pages with texts, facts and a nice photo series we shooted with Oh! Photography.

Architecture: Nana Architektur
Exhibition stand construction: Fairtects

Thank you for the photos at Drupa, Carla Meurer!

See more of the project here.

I can hardly remember the time before knowing Anna Kovacs, … She was owner of the small bakery Backraum in Vienna, we did the corporate design for – but actually she’s an architect, a really cooool architect and managing director of Nana Architektur. Her Logo – a lettering, website and business cards were done by us.

Even the printing part, letterpress and neon edges, we did by hand! For some time past we have a little Boston press in our office. Not only for the letterpress we really like to get dirty some time! 

So first time we did that was for Anna’s business cards. We have to say it was worth it!

Meanwhile she’s not only a client, she’s a really good friend AND since very recently a project partner. Co-creative processes in different exciting jobs, … signage system for a deep-level garage, exhibiton stand for Lenzing Papier, … of which more later …

Conclusion: I’m happy we crossed her path!

When Beatrix Stekl took over the shirt tailoring business that her grandfather founded in 1948, she knew, the brand had to be transfered into the present. In summer 2010 she assigned Typejockeys to do so. Since then a lot has happened and we are happy to be still in charge of the design for this traditional Viennese brand.

One of the first steps in the redesign process was to take a look at the history of the brand.

In more then 60 years of Wäscheflott’s existence, the brand experienced some subtile as well as more radicall changes. The brand image lacked consistency and needed to be unified. The outmoded look of the brand itself needed to be modernized and freshened up.

Beginning with the logo, we certainly wanted to keep the characteristic and sympathic figure but cleaned it up quite a bit (see image on top). The logotype was lettered from scratch, inspired by some of the old logotypes that has been used (above).

Bright colors were introduced and combined with delicate but classic typography.

The fabric collection is presented to the client in little folders. He/She can then pick the cloth of choice. Gimmicks like wrapping paper were possible, thanks to the love for design that Beatrix Stekl has in common with us.

Printed matter is done in letterpress, from invitation (below) to vouchers and such (further below).

This project not only is a great pleasure to work on, it also changed my view on dress shirts forever. After experiencing a new dimension of material, buttons, seam quality and fitting I’d like to speak out a word of caution: If you ever wore a custom made shirt, it will be pretty hard to go back to the rack!

See more pictures of this project here.

Last friday Creative Club Austria, as every year, awarded the best projects in advertising and design with an infamous Venus. We are very pleased that the McDonald’s campaign we worked on lately, as well as a not yet published project called Wäscheflott were awarded. Read more and see the mentioned project these days in our blog.

We are also happy for our friends at allessandridesign, who were awarded with a golden Venus for their vine lable project The Madaire Collection. What makes us proud, is that the lables are done with our typeface Ingeborg. Congratulations, very well done!

Photo from the award ceremony courtesy of CCA.

... Probably the sexiest combination I know. Viennese ad agency DDB Tribal asked us to contribute to their newest McDonald’s campaign idea. A strong was the headstone for this very pure ad campaign. Art director Dian Warsosumarto had a specific form of lettering in mind, that we tried to cope with. 

The campaign was produced in German and English.

You can see all sujets in their full extend here.

Thomas Gabriel was invited to Munich on Tuesday to talk about Aniuk. He talked about the idea and influence that lead to the type family. The lecture took place at a stunning auditorium called Gasteig Philharmonie. Thanks again for the invitation to the Typographische Gesellschaft München.

Photos: Bundscherer and Typographische Gesellschaft München

Thanks to latest technical achievements typographic diversity no longer stop at the internet. Which means that webdesigners do not have to stick to a handful of fonts for their projects. Besides the good looks, there are many other advances of using webfonts. Text can be marked and copied, is fully indexable by search engines and is of course completely dynamic.

Typefaces on screen are rendered and viewed in a completely different way, than they are on paper. The last few months were dedicated to rehinting and reworking our type families to fit highest quality standards and provide proper on-screen readability. To get a picture please check out our brand new webspecimens for our families Aniuk, Ingeborg and Premiéra.

From now on you can purchase Typejockeys webfonts as a download. You then get all the necessary formats (WOFF, EOT, SVG) for them to work in all popular systems and browsers including iOS. Prices grade according to the pageview traffic of your website per month. The three options are 500.000, 5 million and 50 million.

In addition to that, a new feature found its way to our website. You can now test a typeface dynamically with your own text. Just go to Tryout on the very right of the particular typeface’s page, pick a style and go ahead and write your text.

Webfonts cost half of the price of the corresponding print font. Purchasing Typejockeys webfonts is pretty simple. Installing them doesn’t require you to be programming crack neither. We made a little quick guide for you here, also available for download. If it’s still to much hastle to you, you can additionally rent our fonts at our partner Fontdeck.

If you have any question, don’t hesitate to contact us, we’ll be happy to help you.

Something really cool is going on in big Berlin. Our dear friend and, let’s say tennis super sporty star Ralf Stoffers brings Pádel, originally a traditional South American/Spanish sport into the city. (You can say it’s a hybrid of tennis and squash.) But Play The Wall interprets the sport in a new, urban way.

Orientated at the possibilities of the architecture of a city, all you need is a racket, a ball and a wall you can bat on. That’s how the urban project started last summer, where a bunch of people were seen (and of course some smashes heard) almost every day at a forgotten, romantic spot in government district. Get an impression of the game.

You can play alone, à deux or in a group

Two weeks ago the mobile Pádel Indoor court opened, built into an old factory building. From now on, until march 2012 you can go, see and play there.

And I’m not only telling you all about that, because I think it’s a really great idea, a project which should be supported, I reeeeally like the prototype and the first special racket edition of Play The Wall. And guess who did the lettering …

So, if you are in Berlin – check that out! I had the chance to play some games wih Ralf and Kathrin in spain last spring, you have to believe me: it’s totally FUN! 

Registration, ordering and more information on the Play The Wall website.