Nobel is a geometric sans-serif typeface designed by
Sjoerd Henrik de Roos (1877–1962) and
Dick Dooijes (1909–1998) in the period 1929–1935 for the
Amsterdam Type foundry). Capitalizing upon Lettergieterij Amsterdam's substantial financial interest in the Berlin typefoundry
H. Berthold AG, de Roos decided as a Dutch competitor to Futura to license the Berthold foundry's geometric Berthold Grotesk, change some characters and sell it in the Netherlands under this name.
The resulting face became very popular in Dutch printing.
Andrea Fuchs and
Fred Smeijers produced a revival for the
Dutch Type Library (DTL) in 1993, using the archives of Lettergieterij Amsterdam. In the same year in the United States,
Tobias Frere-Jones, then at
Font Bureau, began a revival of the Nobel face.
Cyrus Highsmith and Dyana Weissman later added the light weights. Frere-Jones described it as an interesting compromise between the purer geometry of
Futura and traditional letters: "Futura cooked in dirty pots and pans."
Nobel WGL is a global version of Nobel used by
Lexus
is the luxury vehicle division of the Japanese automaker Toyota, Toyota Motor Corporation. The Lexus brand is marketed in more than 90 countries and territories worldwide and is Japan's largest-selling make of premium cars. It has ranked amon ...
in its literature and marketing materials. Nobel WGL also supports
Turkish,
Greek
Greek may refer to:
Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe:
*Greeks, an ethnic group
*Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family
**Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor of all kno ...
,
Cyrillic
The Cyrillic script ( ) is a writing system used for various languages across Eurasia. It is the designated national script in various Slavic, Turkic, Mongolic, Uralic, Caucasian and Iranic-speaking countries in Southeastern Europe, Ea ...
,
Vietnamese and Pan-European languages.
Canadian type designer
Ray Larabie designed Mesmerize typeface that inspired from Nobel and available in 40 styles (Expanded, Extended, Normal, Semi Condensed, Condensed, Ultra Light, Extra Light, Light, Book, Regular, Semi Bold, Bold, Extra Bold) with italics. Canada1500 which in turn, a
pan-Unicode expansion of select weights of Mesmerize to include broader language support — as it was designed to cover all of the
languages of Canada
A multitude of languages have always been spoken in Canada. Prior to Canadian Confederation, Confederation, the territories that would become Canada were home to over 70 distinct languages across 12 or so language family, language families. Today ...
as the official typeface for the
Canadian sesquicentennial.
References
Bibliography
*Friedl, Friedrich, Nicholas Ott and Bernard Stein. ''Typography: An Encyclopedic Survey of Type Design and Techniques Through History.'' Black Dog & Leventhal: 1998. .
*Jaspert, Berry and Johnson. ''Encyclopaedia of Type Faces.'' Cassell Paperback, London; 2001.
*Macmillan, Neil. ''An A–Z of Type Designers.'' Yale University Press: 2006. .
*Middendorp, Jan. ''Dutch Type.'' 010 Publishers: 2004. {{ISBN, 978-90-6450-460-0.
External links
Dutch Type Library web page for NobelFrere-Jones Type web page for Nobel
Typefaces and fonts introduced in 1929
Geometric sans-serif typefaces
Letterpress typefaces
Digital typefaces
Typefaces designed by Tobias Frere-Jones