My version of Jan Tschichold’s “Schmale Grotesk - Leicht und schnell konstruierbare Schrift” (narrow grotesque - font that is easy and quick to construct), from 1930.
Turns out it isn’t always “quick and easy” to translate a pen and straightedge approach to constructed letters into Fontstruct’s prefabricated bricks setting.
In expanding the glyph coverage, I tried to remain true to the spirit of the original self imposed limitations, both in terms of grid (e.g. the cramped space for the uppercase diacritics), and of tools (see the solution for superscripts et similia).
The font covers all of Google Fonts Basic set and, given the c-caron present in the source, all of Czech orthography. I may try to add other Eastern European languages in the future.
For different takes on the same source, you can look at Serious, here on Fontstruct, or at Iwan Reschniev, for an extensive expansion in weights and typographic features.
As always, comments and suggestions are welcome :-)
-" Constructivism's central idea is that human learning is constructed, that learners build new knowledge upon the foundation of previous learning" Phillips, 1995.
This is my first Construction based on the theme of "Rebirth". I chose this theme as I wanted to investigate how a country is "reborn" after a war or a revolution. This led me to read an article about graphic design ideas that came from the Russian Revolution. One of them was Constructivist typography-combination of contrasting shapes and sizes. I looked at the work of El Lissitzky and Alexander Rodchenko. From this research I began to cut out shapes of different sizes and began to construct letters- however, this idea didn't translate well in FontStruct. To widen my research, I looked at Constructivist and Soviet Brutalist architecture which my font was inspired by. It reflects buildings like the Polytechnic Institute of Minsk, The Palace of Ceremonies, and the Georgian Ministry of Highways in Tbilisi.
WIP
See more:
https://fontstruct.com/fontstructions/show/1679935/topo-black-1-1-4
https://fontstruct.com/fontstructions/show/1503856/cryostasis-1
https://fontstruct.com/fontstructions/show/1864360/tlof-katana
https://fontstruct.com/fontstructions/show/159996/obsolete_2
https://fontstruct.com/fontstructions/show/2004601/ordnancetm
https://fontstruct.com/fontstructions/show/1518260/fs-phobos-1
This is a clone of Patchy Crypt RobotsWIP
This is a clone of IATA Runway C