Walbaum

Justus Erich Walbaum

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02) designed by Justus Erich Walbaum

Born January 25, 1768 In Steiniah Germany

Died January 31, 1839 In Weimar, Germany

03) Walbaum Designed in 1800

published by Linotype

(http://www.identifont.com/show?393)

04) Modern

05) The Modern classification includes typefaces with sharp serifs, high contrast.

Abrupt and dramatically contrasting stroke weights and little or no serif bracketing. Terminals are “ball-shaped” rather than reflecting a broad pen. Despite its name, this typeface style emerged in the 18th century. Some Modern typefaces were designed by Giambattista Bodoni in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries and were considered radically abstract. So-called modern types were produced between c. 1788 and approximately 1820, when type design almost everywhere went into a major decline. Modern faces in general share characteristics resulting from the engraver’s tool rather than the pen.

06) Didot, Bodoni, and computer modern

07) In 1800...

The world was nearing 1 billion people (978 mill)

Cardinal Barnaba Chiaramonti succeeds Pius VI as Pius VII as the 251st Pope

The U.S Library of Congress is founded

Napoleon Bonaparte crosses the Alps and invades Italy

Ireland is proposed to join Great Britian to form the United Kingdom

President John Adams becomes the first President of the United States to life in the Executive Mansion, the White House

U.S congress holds its first Washington D.C session

William Talbot the English Photographer Pioneer was born

beginning of the change from the neoclassicism movement to the Romanic Movement.

The French Revolutionary Wars (1792-1802)

Napoleonic Wars (1799-1815)

08) Along with Walbaum he did Monotype Walbaum, and Walbaum Franktur

09) Walbaum came to typography via the unusual route of confectionery. He taught himself engraving while making his own pudding moulds while working in a pastry shop. At night, he started engraving music types. Eventually he set up his own foundry in a town called Goslar.

In 1802, just before his town was to be incorporated into Prussia, he left for Weimar. Here he established another very successful foundry. His classical types were very popular for a while until the fashion changed. His name disappeared until the 1920s, when it was revived as Monotype Walbaum.

Justus Erich Walbaum sits quietly in his Weimar workshop, establishing the German branch of Neo-classical typography. Beside Didot and Bodoni, Walbaum seems to stand rather on the margin of glory. His typeface, when judged according to the Neo-classical rules, is even a little bit “impure”. But this is precisely the reason why it is much more legible, softer and more humane than it would have been, if it had merely, blindly, aimed at an ideal. Justus Erich Walbaum came to typography from another, this time much more distant profession. He was born in 1768 as a parson’s son and was apprenticed to a confectioner in his young days. From engraving confectioner’s moulds it was only a short step to cutting type punches and type-founder’s tools. Renaissance graphic artists, to be sure, were fellows of a different calibre – they started their careers by engraving weapons! Walbaum’s name, however, does not appear in any imprint lines, because he probably never printed books himself. The same type faces were used by other printers of that period, for example Unger or Prillwitz. Maybe the last fine Walbaum type face was used to print Berthold’s Specimen Book of 1923, which also includes a specimen text in the size of 12 points, on which our transcription draws. In contradistinction to the strictly rational Didot or the elegant Bodoni, Walbaum at first sight does not possess any features that might lead to a brief attribute. In any case, however, it is an outstanding work, a far cry from chocolate wafer-cakes or cream horns. The expression of the type face is robust, as if it had been seasoned with the spicy smell of the dung of Saxon cows somewhere near Weimar, where the author had his type foundry in the years 1803-39. Its typical features are: a firm skeleton of the design of the individual letters, in some cases supported by a square scheme; daring triangular serifs of S, s, C, and G; K and R standing, like an old grumbler, with one foot placed forward; and rather conservative italics. An especially unsuccessful solution for its time was the design of italic figures. Nevertheless, they were blindly taken over by the Berthold Company in 1919, together with the other shortcomings. (http://www.stormtype.com/people.php?id=8)

The x-height of our Walbaum Text is Neo-classically reasonable in reaction to Baroque experimentation with proportions. Its descenders are relatively long; its ascenders are on a level with upper case letters. In the italic designs, lower case letters are inclined slightly more than upper case ones: this is a typical phenomenon seen in most historical type faces and we have already got accustomed to it over all those centuries. The minor irregularities and the soft details of the original type face have been retained for pleasant reading. The already mentioned figures in the italic designs have been completely redrawn to preserve the time-conditioned, uniform character of the type face family. All designs have been balanced for small sizes under 12 points. My work on Walbaum did not take long thanks to its very economizing form; the rough digitalization of its eight designs lasted exactly from 2 to 23 April 2002. This “solid body face” can be used for any sort of fiction, in particular, however, for German Romantic novels from rural settings. (http://new.myfonts.com/fonts/storm/walbaum-text/)

Based on the types of Justus Erich Walbaum, a letter cutter and type founder who set up his own foundry in Germany in 1798. Walbaum was influenced by the modern style typefaces being cut in France by letter cutters such as Firmin Didot. Walbaum is one of the most attractive modern faces. It has a lightness and delicacy which imparts an air of grace to text setting. The slight squareness of the characters gives the face an openness which is lacking in many moderns. Use the Monotype Walbaum font family for quality books, magazines, brochures and catalogues. (http://www.fonts.com/findfonts/detail.asp?pid=243198)

10) “The whole duty of typography, as of calligraphy, is to communicate to the imagination, without loss by the technology.”-anonymous