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Blackletter Font
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What is Blackletter Font?
- "Gothic" style
- Associated with Medieval Times
- Mainly used in headlines, logos, signs, diplomas, and labels
- Also includes Celtic type
The Gutenberg Bible
A Little History
- First printed type
- "...In which the darkness of the characters over-powers the whiteness of the page" - Steven Heller
Name Calling
Blackletter During World War 2
- Was held in high regard by Germans
- Represented their heritage
- Widely used by Nazi party
- Blackletter was later deemed a "Jewish Script"
-Blackletter consists of many different styles, old and new.
-The most common style is Fraktur.
-Blackletter font is often called Old English and confused with the Old English language which it is not.
-The different types of Blackletter font consist of...
-Has been in use since the 12th century.
-Was popular mainly because it was cheap!
-By the 18th century, this font had been phased out by most of western Europe.
-Germany continued to use Blackletter type up into the 20th century.
New Black Letter Fonts
- RotundaClemente
- RotundaGutenberg
- Textura
- Textura Modern
- Textur Gotisch DFR LTTextur
- Gotisch DFR Alternative
- LT Textur Lombardisch
- DFR Fette Fraktur LTFette
- Fraktur Central European
- LTSchwabacherNurnberg
- Schwabacher
Four Major Families
Three Minor Families
- Cursiva
- Hybrida
- Donatus-Kalender
- Textura
- Rotunda
- Schwabacher
- Fraktur
Type Traits
Blackletter type has unique characteristics which make it an instantly recognizable typeface.
This typeface is composed of elaborate thick strokes and thin strokes, as well as very blatant serifs.
During the span of time that this font was in prominent use (mid 1100's - 17th century), there was no bold or italic form for Blackletter type. As opposed to using bold and italics to create emphasis, often times the tracking was loose and extra space was provided between the letters.
The problem with the loose tracking however, was that with that extra spacing, the many ligatures in the typeface resulted in weird looking text. Though, when not using ligatures, some extra spacing can make some Blackletter typefaces easier to read.
As Blackletter can be a hard typeface to read, it should never be used in all caps.