When Bauhaus met Art Deco

What better way to celebrate our bright future than pushing a whole creative medium forward? Introducing Brick Patching – a combinatoric approach to constructing hyper-tunable curved and angular modular forms.

Stay tuned to this space; *eventually I will describe this highly useful hack and fully document the technique.

Upgrade your gray matter cuz one day it may matter.

Berlin, Moscow, Paris in the 1920s... Bauhaus, Konstruktivizm, Art Deco... Effervescent people! This font is for Stefan, the cameraman in the picture, and for all the people who together built the world. Alternative M and N in the { and } glyphs. See also zergei and zandrine.

STF GROOTESK Pro ― Contemporary geometric grotesque
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A clean and geometric grotesque sans-serif typeface that is equipped with tons of extended professional editorial typographic features,

such as:
Multilingual support in 3 script writing systems for 113 languages, glyph alternative forms, stylistic ligatures, accents and punctuation marks, symbols, technical, ordinal, pictographs, additional dingbats.
15164 stored kerning-pair and many other professional features!
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[ TECHNICAL ]
■  Metrics(in square grid units)

5.0-Em / 0.5-Stroke
2.0 : 2.0-Brick Size Filter

Em-Square:           5.0
Cap-Height:          3.25
X-Height:              2.0
Ascent:                  0.875
Descent:                1.0
Overshoots:    2 × 0.0625   Top/Bottom  - (uppercase only)
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■  [ ADDITIONAL EXTRA IMPORTANT RELEASE NOTES ]

Previously published as a (non-Pro)-version with the same name.

But when that version eventually corrupted, it rendered it useless.

And after several repair attempts the innitial isolated "FS-editor" native
brick corruption eventually was fixed! But from this point onward all theFontStruct-generated-*.TTF-files downloaded from this particular FontStruction delivered a broken TrueType-font file, that upon its installation process resulted in having a error. Leaving me, or anyone for that matter who had downloaded it, unable to get it or its updates installed.

So after unsuccesfull struggling for a while I noticed that the cloned version didn't generate a broken *.TTF-file. So I decided to terminated the original FontStruction and delete it.

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■  [ DESIGN INFORMATION ]

The main inspiration came from those early to mid-20th century geometric grotesques, and visual environment of that era.
Although the characters were mostly geometrically constructed, and remain as close as possible to basic geometry, "STF GROOTESK Pro" includes a blend of stylish hints of hand-crafted lettering influences and intentional irregularities in order to tribute those classical geometric designs.

For extra additional emphasis the design tries to take advantage of a rather unusual vertical Uc>Lc proportion, with ascender parts of the 'Lc' characters sitting well bellow the cap-height, making the 'Uc' appear strikingly taller in comparison. Essentially providing  the uppercase with a more "Condensed" feel. Some of the other characteristics of the design are it's sturdy and stylish yet clean presence, with little to no contrast, and it comes in bold style only. But to compensate for the lack of extra weight versions there was some serious time invested into additional testing and optimizing the entire typeface. So it is super well mastered and therefor extremely versatile.

That being said..

Looks can be deceptive at quick first glance, and this indeed might appear as being a very basic looking design. Even though this in fact is far from being just that other basic looking display sans, nor your next boring geometric grotesque!

From a FontStructor-perspective point-of-view I recommend to take a more ‘close-up’ view of the design's finer details. This creates a better understanding and greater appreciation for the extreme level of complexity that is present in both form and function.
Zooming-in on some of the letters would reveal the font's subtle, yet nuanced diversity of that 'previously' hidden underlying personal characteristics that usually remain invisible in text format at smaller point size. Now suddenly just its overall care for finer detail and overall quality within every bit of the design, the tons of custom shaping, stroke transitions and additional smoothing will gradually emerge as zoom levels get ever deeper. At its deepest level it will even shed some light on the surgical stuff that mostly works invisibly and without the awareness of its reader.

A display typeface at it's core, still it performs equally great in very small body-print text or web design application, as it does too in larger format for headings, ads or branding.
Thus providing, this very function efficient and reliable work-horse,

a truly genuine "one style fits all" typeface powerhouse.

And there its no question whether this could hand out "a 'one-punch' K.O." of a Headliner, thats obvious. But this unyielding bumpy behemoth just as well takes u for the long run, effortlessly telling you fascinating stories.

Especially well cared for optimized rendering on a computer display device, and deliver simple yet versatile seemless digital typeset material.

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■  [ SPECIAL NOTE ]
A big thanks and 50% of the design credits for the lowercase 's' go out to elmoyenique
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■  [ "Pro" VERSION EXTRA'S ]
The new "Pro" version update for GROOTESK utilizes several TrueType smart-font features and control characters to map two or more glyphs for combining glyph composition.

The design was inspired by Josef Albers Kombinationschrift alphabet. A modular typeface built using a limited number of basic shapes. Need a condensed stencil typeface? Look no further! Little Tittle was created for those tight spaces. A condensed set width paired with short ascending and descending strokes allows for tight spacing vertically as well. Little Tittle is exclusively lowercase; however, it does have a stencil and solid version so you can mix and match styles for more typographic variety.

Quite different from Archaus, but can be considered as from the same series.

Spacing got much better ;)

Additional lines give this a certain retro-deco feel.

Thanks!

BLAUHAUS - Bold Bauhaus inspired geometric typeface.

I know there is tons of out there already, but I had to do one myself...

It's far from perfect, but it was made on a very tiny grid space, so a whole lot of space to occupy with bricks wasn't a luxury this one!  (I'll demonstrate a example below)

Still I think it looks pretty rad so far!

Fauxhaus — Geometric minimalist modernism sans-serif design
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[INSPIRATION]
As the name already suggests, this indeed was inspired by the Bauhaus-typograpy towards functionality style.

More specifically by Austrian artistic polymath Herbert Bayer's 1925 experimental "Universal" alphabet.
The alphabet he designed became somewhat synonymous with the school's identity, and probably is the most well known Bauhaus typeface, and truly epitomizing that typical simplified "Form follows function" Bauhaus-minimalism style. It was also used for the new Bauhaus-building signage.

Some key features in Bayer's original form are those easily recognizable geometric sans-serif letterings, with letter composition based on strong basic geometry, having eliminated all decorative elements of the letterform composition for that crisp industrial, slight mechanical minimalist aesthetic. Bayer's original Universal alphabet also eliminated the need for a upper case letter, further simplifying it towards more of a functionality-driven standardization. Bayer developed multiple revisions and variations of the alphabet. Sadly Universal was never cast as a font, as during that era they weren't manufactured into printing typefaces, and the designs would only exist as drafts (as was the case with all Bauhaus-typefaces). Nonetheless it served as a lettering model for Bauhaus students, colleagues, and followers alike, and they were regularly re-used for signs, book covers and publications by many of its members, but even beyond institution walls the typographic style began to gain a foothold. Throughout the years we have seen a multitude of revivals and other Bauhaus-inspired typeface designs. Some of which that try to be faithful digitizations of the original, whereas others taking a more artistic approach to the style by providing their own personalized reinterpretation of the Bauhaus-aesthetic. So even to this day, many decades later, it repeatedly continues to inspire and influence designers time and again.

Bayer, First a student and later junior master of the printing workshop, was one of Bauhaus’s most influential attendees, advocating the integration of all arts throughout his career. Though not trained as a typographer, he was also assigned with the task of creating a universal visual & typographic identity for the school.—a task Bayer took very serious.Sparking perhaps the most mythic typeface to ever come out of the Bauhaus, which is "Universal"—one that at that time strove to be as idealistic as the school itself
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[THE "FAUXHAUS" FONT]
This is an artistic reinterpretation of Bayer's "Universal" alphabet.

Aiming to preserve the unmistakable style and simplistic geometric stylistic properties of the original, while in the same time allowing a more 'free-form'-approach towards crafting the letterform compositions. This of-course as long as they remains in-line with the stylistic properties of the original. And for the lack of having a better explanation;

—To do sort-of a 'faithfully different' artist depiction of Bayer's original Universal alphabet.

Some notable differences made in Fauxhaus compared to Universal are the re-introduction of a upper case form and the slight de-simplification and inclusion of subtle decorative nuance.

In some cases I've choosen to compose certain specific characters to be more or less identical as to how Bayer originally intended them, whereas others may be entirely different looking. And for some characters have one or more alternative form as well. Some of which are more 'ad hoc'- compositions drawn as we went when new ideas popped up. But others were specifically created to preserve and / -or include certain distinctive and unmistakably identifiable letterforms from Bayer's original Universal alphabet.

Greek & Cyrillic characters included in Fauxhaus were solely added for my personal experimentation purpose only, and they serve 'zero' function as to additional language support of the font.

"Use at your very own risk"— as these could very easily be gone the very next update.

Each letterform was meticulously composed from a random collection of the various memories, which after some thirty Bauhaus-inspired and / -or -revival works including their respective 'shared' research I have accumulated over time for Bauhaus typography like Bayer's work.
No source reference image was used as guidance for creating this FontStruction, everything came straight from the knowledge I gathered from the many previous Bauhaus related projects I did.
So to draw solely from memory alone somewhat a convincing and reasonably similar personal reinterpretation of an original 'Bauhaus' typeface at this stage has gotten pretty easy for me.

For this project in particular I've choosen to construct the letterforms on a medium sized grid, using the linear interpolation 'faux'-Bézier method. So beware that when using this font at very large point size rendering the remnants of this process will become visible!

That's all for now, I hope you like it so far,

Cheers

The next step from Starast Maxi.

I made a font inspired by art-deco, which I really love. To more universal capital letters, more decorative lowercase have been made, which can be varied by additional alternative characters (o e i).

EPOCH - Modern light-weight geometric display sans

───── 「 MEASURES 」
(in grid units)
X-Height:                       １
Cap-Height:                   ２
Descent:                         １
Optical  Corrections:       None
Stroke:                            １／８ ｔｈ
   
 4－Ｅｍ ／ ０.１２５ : １－Ｓｔｒｏｋｅ （０.１２５ ≍ １／８ ｔｈ）

― No filters used.

───── 「 SUMMARY 」
This is yet another deep dive into the very small and tiny quantum realm of FontStruct's small grid and light-weight stokes.
Unlike some of my previous endeavours into this dark corner of the FS-editor, which could have dizzying complexity in forms, this project for once didn't stress the sh....*t out of me by stretching the limits for my capabilities beyond what is still comfortable this time. Nor did it drain every last frigging bit of my knowledge or clever creative insight to pull it off.

On the contrary,
For once it remained largely a pretty straight forward and easy project in terms of forms and geometry. The absence for most of the 'bar-raising' features such as diagonal forms, rounded, transitions or stroke modulation made this 'FontStruction' that much more easy.

And when metaphorically breaking it down to the bare naked form and necessities, this design mainly consist of FS's (default)-brick set, resized modifications of those, combined with a set of stacked composites.

There a still a number of things I'd rather seen differently, and will see later attempts at making improvement, but taken in a broad perspective most of the included material so far look pretty fine to me already. And to point out one of the things that is still bugging actually are the 'accented' letters.
Some glyphs have odd values for their 'character'-width, and this makes it impossible to achieve 'grid to em-square'-bounding box allignement in FS's editor. So accents in these asymmetrical values look slightly ofset.

― "Changing character widths to nearest even value is simply far too destructive to the stylish characteristics of the fonts appearance"

───── 「 ABOUT  THE FONT 」
In the end it became a pretty cool looking light-weight geometric modernist sans-serif style that at the same time has strong hints of Art-Deco-style lettering as well.

And apart from the minor things it fell short with, I think there is a lot about its overall character-set design and forms that is looking pretty darn rad actually if you ask me.

Content-wise the font is a single case design in a 'all-caps' or Majuscule style. The (Lc)-string was kept empty for deliberately for the technical reason of preserving all the (default)-blank metrics data for any further design updates.

───── 「 WHATS INSIDE 」

A little bit of everything...
 
■ Body text formatting:
    □ Basic-Latin based character set with accented letters & numerals
    □ Most punctuation marks
    □ Numerous symbols

■ Decorative formatting
    □ Pictorial attributes
    □ Repeating patterns

───── 「 THE END 」

Let me know what you think so far,

Cheers