Order Type Foundry digs deep into type design history to craft its “airy” sans serif, Haltung

Throughout the history of type design, education has been an unwavering pillar. Eager students have been guided by teachers who are masters of the craft of designing typefaces, passing on the lessons that their mentors taught them. This was something Auckland-based type and graphic designer Joe Moore was thinking about. Drawn towards the ‘air’-like quality Univers gave in issues of IDEA Magazine – particularly the issues designed by Helmut Schmid, discussions between Moore and Order Type Foundry prompted the question – “What gives sans serifs ‘air’ in its letterforms?” Moore recalls Walter Käch’s sans serif lettering, Adrian Frutiger’s Univers, and the students at the Basel School of Design studying under Emil Ruder’s tutelage. “Käch was a calligrapher and taught at the Zürich School of Arts and Crafts,” he explains. “His teachings combined classical Roman lettering and a humanist approach to the design of a sans serif, which influenced Frutiger’s creation of Univers. Univers was then heavily adopted by Emil Ruder and his students like Helmut Schmid.”