neither friends nor everbody ookalte, Even fyoucamet ssethe diference, voucan fei Counters and negative ‘Shapes need speci Betintons mproves Dyfaredstokesand r38 Orignal perc Stetchesto define the characters chara rs auestonofweight themidale one isthe Fiahvone re Capsalitismale, fies smaler bunt ite ‘escendor 7 Post Mortem or: How | once designed a typeface for Europe’s biggest company. Name, logo, colourand typeface— those are the basic elements of any corporate design programme. Once the firstof these elements has been defined or indeed, designed, the fourth ‘one hardly ever presents a problem. In Germany, it's got to be Helvetica And ifit isn’t Helvetica, Univers might justbe allowed. fa company wants to look more traditional and considers aserifface one usually chooses Times New Roman ‘When Sedley Place Design in Berlin was commissioned to develop a corporate design programme for the West German Post Office - Deutsche Bundespost—itbecame clear right rom the start that this time Helvetica did not fitthe bill: itis being used by too many other companies because ofits ‘neutral appearance and tfailsto distinguish the Bundespost on this very basic level ‘One ofthe reasons why so many companies have chosen Helvetica as their corporate typeface’ the factthat itispertaps the most widely available typeface today. This availablity has, however, been achieved atthe expense rh Hausschrift AEG Hausschrift BASF Hausschrift Bayer Hausschrift BMW Hausschrift Bundesbahn Hausschrift Bundespost Hausschrift Daimler Benz Hausschrift Lufthansa Hausschrift Nixdorf Hausschrift Siemens Hausschrift Sparkasse Hbauen 15 rr a ae of ecognizability. There are so many weights, versions, legal andillegal adap: tations and so many other almost identi- caltypefaces that by simply specifying Helvetica’ one ends up with arange of almost right’ and ‘not quite right” solutions. Visual chaos instead of one typeface being the common denomina torofall corporate communications. Since Helvetica first appeared in the late fifties the typesetting and printing industries have been subjectto a series oftechnical changes, ifnot revolutions. oor Helvetica was never intended to be used in very small sizes, seton low-reso- lution CRT-setters and printed on rough recycled paper Itwas also never intended asa space-saving face forlistings, tables orinfacttelephone books. Condensingit electronically tofita given space doesn’t help much toenhance the original design either, which was fora generous, even appearance. Faced with all these argu: mentsand the factthattoday itis possible togosstraight from fairly rough artwork into digitisation via the Ikarus pro- gramme, thus saving enormoustimeand costs, the Bundespost gave Sedley Place slant amt bauen bauen Design the go-ahead forthe develop: ‘ment of an exclusive type design based on the necessities of the corporate design programme. Thebale Atypeface for Europe's biggest employer (more than 500,000 employees) has to cdo more than look pretty: ithas to work pretty hard, Rather than going fr attrac- tive novelty, we decided that needed tobe: very legible, particulary in small sizes and under the special considera- tions of finding names and figures rather than reading extensive amounts of copy; neutral, not fashionable, trendy or nostalgic; identical on all typesetting systems; available from every supplier of typesetting in the country at very short notice and at reasonable cost; economical nits application ~ ie space-saving; designed in clearly distinguishable weights; distinct and unmistakable; technically up-to-date. d45 nab rrrrr bauen nab‘Special considerations Printing on rough, thin or otherwise problematic paperstock, coarse resolu- tion of high-speed typesetting systems, tuneven inking, extremely small type- t sizes, minimum line-feed to save space, ‘and very often—as in listings ofall. sorts ~line after line of similar word | shapes pose particular problems tothe design ofa typeface. These adverse conditions can only be counteracted by technical and aesthetic manipulations during the design pro cess.Pretty shapes viewed atlargesizes are thus less important than the fact that individual characters work well within words and fulfil their purpose within the constraints ofthat particular brief. Specially-designed faces such as Bell Centennial show that solutions can bbe found for clearly defined problems. Inorder then to define the task instead of elying on individual inspiration by gifted artists, weanalysed sixfamiliesof faces to see what they have in common and how far one can deviate one way or the other re ‘Theconcept ‘After having measured vi tions, eg xcheight to cap-he thickness to cap-height, average width, dimensions of ascenders, descenders and figures as well as having looked at critical shapes ~ letters which are easily mistaken for each other, relationships between white space and black shape, ‘etc—we had a clear view of what our typeface should look like: ithad to bea sans serifface—to go for anything else would have been too much ofa culture shock fora rather conservative client; we needed a narrow typeface, but not ‘a condensed version ofan existing design; the main strokes had tobe thick enough towithstand printing on rough paper butatthe same time light enough to sivean even appearance with enough space between letters to distinguish individual characters; characters needed to be individual ‘enough to avoid mix-up with similar characters but not over-designed; capital letters had to clearly mark the rs urgloBe. PPHfb st Ham burg _ Hamburg HOHOonon HOHO nono abcdefghi jklmnopqr stuvwxyz& DAS ABCDEFG HIKLMNQ PRSTUVW XYZ811 2345677 890(/ beginning of new words (in German, all proper nouns start with a capital let- ter) butnot to stick out obtrusively when used as caps only; height had to be relatively large but nottoo much so; figures needed to be clearly distinguish able from each other and somewhat ‘smaller than caps to avoid groups of figures sticking outand looking bigger than type; ‘curves, indentations, flares and open joins were to counteract bad definition, overinking and optical illusions, especially in small sizes; tension between smooth outer shapes ‘and somewhat squared-off counters was to increase clarity and legibility; counters and negative shapes were to be given special consideration. Having a family ofthree weights ~ regular, regular italicand bold would provide enough differentiation forthe Bundespost’s needs. The regularand bold weights have to be drawn by hand; after digitisation the data can be used tointerpolate the italic, which then needs small adjustments made. re t Detnng he yt — Rresandmoreunitaes sndsethestandaré forthe restottne alphabet ra Preliminary ator forth regular weight, cap height approx — 90mm (since. re onlay faces for Sigragesystoms ae {oobold ot gvngthe Inmershapes enough ‘etn Ths version (opting 515% heavier than te regular rs Comectes outing Atrawings atthe iat Streof192.5m (7% Ince) Te iets arethe pont econ puterneedstostore thecomplete character rio Could eguarand bold Fave the same widths? Fee igstion, more (Gnesi ae needed, a o>Eksplekermann Post Mortem Tre Bundespostiogo tras alo redraw {harmonize withthe Sypesattng fot rs Ampersandsto chose ‘the ight stil isn't quite the inal one ye Fist igsed version ofPT55 regula) ‘ndPT75(beld), Seton ron ri Mandan artwork forthe display weight brougtte the same Forsignage systems, architectural lettering, vehicles and large headline sizes one would needa special medium weight which can be withoutall the limitations ofa typeface for very small sizes. This means itcan be less explicit ints individual characters but instead be legible nlargesizes and rom distance. This version, too, can initially be interpolated between regularand bold and then adapted toits specific purpose. Once the data are available ‘on the karus system, one can even considera slightly more condensed and exaggerated version forsetting tele- phone books with specially adapted ‘weights and figures. Special signs such as pictograms, symbols, signs, the Bundespostlogo etc canalso be included on a font for typesetting, thus eliminating repro- duction and make-up work. Itwould eventually even be feasible touse the design as the basis for an, exclusive typewriter face on electronic daisy wheel machines. ris ‘Theresult shows. ry abcdefghijklmnop qrstuvwxyz Badu ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOP QRSTUVWXYZAOU 1234567890 (/-&-) Hausschrift eae: ‘Theillustrations on these pages show the development of Sedley Place's design work on the typeface. Oncea typesetting fontwasavailable, the forms which Sedley Place had re-designed wereallsetin the new face as weresome publications. This was all done without any major corrections to the original design which would, of course, needed eventually —as this setting ‘Through talks with all relevant manufacturers of typesetting equip ‘ment twas guaranteed that the face would be available on all these systems atthe same time. As the Bundespost had paid forall the design work, the fonts could be sold ata considerable discount, therefore allowing even the smallest supplier of typesetting to invest in the new typeface. The Minister of Telecommunications. himself had expressed interest in the face, the publicity department, who had asked Sedley Place to go ahead with ru the project, wanted itand a professor ‘of Applied Psychology had written a very favourable reportonit. he administra tion, however, decided not to go ahead with the introduction of the exclusive corporate typeface because it would ‘cause unrest: Instead, itwas decided thatall the known Helveticas were to continue as the Deutsche Bundespost's houseface. ‘So go back tothe beginning and start reading again. Original concept, Dightsee: ‘esearchand DiStempelAG, Frankf Erspickemann, assisted by Micha Biter atSedley Place Desig, Bertin stings: Fotos: Hamann, ‘Trigartte was set Sreompletealpabets: nPTSSand75. Sern amey and ke PrateyatSediey Pace Design London © Sedie Place Design Bertin GmbH 1985 ri abcdefghijklmnop qrstuvwxyz8da6d ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOP ORSTUVWXYZAOU 1234567890 (./,-&-) Hausschrift abcdefghijkimnop qrstuvwxyzBaoii ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOP QRSTUVWXYZAOU 1234567890 (./,-&-) Hausschrift