Venus Bold Type Specimen (9142443945) (cropped)

Venus or Venus-Grotesk is a sans-serif typeface family released by the

Bauer Type Foundry Bauer is a German surname meaning "peasant" or "farmer". For notable people sharing the surname, see Bauer (surname). Bauer may also refer to: Education and literature * Bauer's Lexicon, a dictionary of Biblical Greek * Bauer College of Bu ...

of Frankfurt am Main, Germany from 1907 onwards. Released in a large range of styles, including condensed and extended weights, it was very popular in the early-to-mid twentieth century. It was exported to other countries, notably the United States, where it was distributed by Bauer Alphabets Inc, the U.S. branch of the firm. Like other "grotesque" typefaces of the period such as

Akzidenz-Grotesk Akzidenz-Grotesk is a sans-serif typeface family originally released by the Berthold Type Foundry of Berlin. ''german: label=none, italic=no, "Akzidenz"'' indicates its intended use as a typeface for commercial print runs such as publicity, t ...

of the

Berthold Type Foundry H. Berthold AG was one of the largest and most successful type foundries in the world for most of the modern typographic era, making the transition from foundry type to cold type successfully and only coming to dissolution in the digital type era. ...

, Venus has a minimal, 'neutral' design, with a monoline structure and an absence of flourishes. However, compared to many later sans-serifs, such as

Helvetica Helvetica (originally Neue Haas Grotesk) is a widely used sans-serif typeface developed in 1957 by Swiss typeface designer Max Miedinger and Eduard Hoffmann. Helvetica is a neo-grotesque design, one influenced by the famous 19th century (1890s ...

and Univers, it has a more irregular design, with stroke terminals at a variety of angles rather than generally exactly horizontal or vertical. A notable feature is the distinctive motif of unusually high-waisted capitals, visible in the 'R', 'G' and 'E'. Walter Tracy describes this as similar to some of the much more adorned

Art Nouveau Art Nouveau (; ) is an international style of art, architecture, and applied art, especially the decorative arts. The style is known by different names in different languages: in German, in Italian, in Catalan, and also known as the Modern ...

and Secessionist lettering of the period. Original versions had sheared horizontal stroke terminals on 'E' and 'F', but in the later metal-type period it was sold with alternate capitals without these. The 'g' is single-storey and the sloped form is an

oblique Oblique may refer to: * an alternative name for the character usually called a slash (punctuation) ( / ) * Oblique angle, in geometry * Oblique triangle, in geometry *Oblique lattice, in geometry * Oblique leaf base, a characteristic shape of the ...

, rather than a true italic. A double-storey 'g' was also available as an alternate character. A prominent use of it was Jan Tschichold's second book, ''Eine Stunde Druckgestaltung'', (1930), which used it for body text. It was also used in other avant-garde printing of the period.

Sainsbury's J Sainsbury plc, trading as Sainsbury's, is the second largest chain of supermarkets in the United Kingdom, with a 14.6% share of UK supermarket sales. Founded in 1869 by John James Sainsbury with a shop in Drury Lane, London, the company wa ...

, a major United Kingdom supermarket chain, used Venus in its logo for many years. A number of digitisations have been released based on some styles of the family. Monotype's 1920s Grotesque 215 and 216 series, created for their

hot metal typesetting In printing and typography, hot metal typesetting (also called mechanical typesetting, hot lead typesetting, hot metal, and hot type) is a technology for typesetting text in letterpress printing. This method injects molten type metal into a mol ...

system, were also reportedly loosely based on it; the standard Windows typeface Arial is influenced by them. In 2007, David Berlow published the Vonness typeface, loosely based on the Venus typeface. Eric Olson designed the Coordinates typeface, a monospaced sans-serif typeface based on the Venus typeface.

Gallery

File:Venus Bold Extended Type Specimen (10544068414).jpg, Venus Bold Extended File:Venus Extra Bold Type Specimen (8033811809).jpg, Venus Extra Bold File:Venus Bold Condensed Type Specimen (9266586068).jpg, Venus Bold Condensed

References

{{notelist, 30em

External links

* Fonts In Use
Venus
an
Venus breit fett

Bauer specimen
Grotesque sans-serif typefaces Display typefaces Bauer Type Foundry typefaces