Normal-Grotesk is a

sans-serif In typography and lettering, a sans-serif, sans serif (), gothic, or simply sans letterform is one that does not have extending features called "serifs" at the end of strokes. Sans-serif typefaces tend to have less stroke width variation than ...

typeface that was sold by the

Haas Type Foundry Haas Type Foundry (''Haas'sche Schriftgiesserei'') was a Swiss manufacturer of foundry type. First the factory was located in Basel Basel ( ; ), also known as Basle ( ), ; ; ; . is a city in northwestern Switzerland on the river Rhine ...

(Haas'sche Schriftgiesserei) of

Basel Basel ( ; ), also known as Basle ( ), ; ; ; . is a city in northwestern Switzerland on the river Rhine (at the transition from the High Rhine, High to the Upper Rhine). Basel is Switzerland's List of cities in Switzerland, third-most-populo ...

and

Münchenstein Münchenstein (Swiss German: ''Minggestai'') is a municipality in the district of Arlesheim in the canton of Basel-Landschaft in Switzerland. Historical records Münchenstein is first mentioned in 1196 as ''Kekingen''. In 1270, it was mentione ...

Switzerland Switzerland, officially the Swiss Confederation, is a landlocked country located in west-central Europe. It is bordered by Italy to the south, France to the west, Germany to the north, and Austria and Liechtenstein to the east. Switzerland ...

, and popular in Swiss graphic design towards the end of the metal type period in the mid-twentieth century. As the name suggests, Normal-Grotesk is a “neutral” and functional design on the "grotesque" model popular in nineteenth and twentieth century Germany, with a minimal design lacking decorative features. The typeface is slightly condensed, with almost straight-sided capitals in the regular weight, similar to

DIN 1451 DIN 1451 is a sans-serif typeface that is widely used for traffic, administrative and technical applications. It was defined by the German standards body DIN (, 'German Institute for Standardisation', pronounced like the English word ''din'') in ...

and

Roboto Roboto () is a typeface family developed by Google. The first typeface was created as the system font for its Android (operating system), Android operating system, and released in 2011 for Android Ice Cream Sandwich, Android 4.0 "Ice Cream Sa ...

; the 'r' has a droop and the 'g' is single-storey. Oldřich Hlavsa’s textbook ''A Book of Type and Design'' describes it as “a most useful version of the refined display sans-serif, with a perfectly balanced design of the lower-case.” Around the mid-1950s, a decline in sales took hold of Normal-Grotesk and the Haas Foundry's other grotesque 'Französische Grotesk', as the

Akzidenz-Grotesk Akzidenz-Grotesk is a sans-serif typeface family originally released by the Berthold Type Foundry of Berlin in 1898. ' indicates its intended use as a typeface for commercial print runs such as publicity, tickets and forms, as opposed to fine pr ...

of Berthold became more popular. This led the Haas Foundry to create “Neue Haas Grotesk”, later renamed

Helvetica Helvetica, also known by its original name 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 f ...

, in response. Indra Kupferschmid, an expert on German and Swiss printing history, describes it as a “reworking of “Neue Moderne Grotesk”, originally ca. 1909 by Wagner & Schmidt, Leipzig. Initially issued by Haas under the name “Accidenz-Grotesk”, later spelled “Akzidenz-Grotesk”. In 1943 Haas added a regular weight offered under the name “Normale Akzidenz-Grotesk”. In 1954, the whole family was revised and renamed “Normal-Grotesk”, also to prevent confusion with he Berthold Type Foundry’s">Berthold_Type_Foundry.html" ;"title="he Berthold Type Foundry">he Berthold Type Foundry’s

.” Several characters were reworked to make the forms more contemporary. At the same time, a range of text sizes were made available for the Linotype hot metal typesetting system. Kupferschmid notes that the original design was licensed by Wagner & Schmidt to a number of other European companies, so it "was cast by many European foundries in the early 20th century. Known as Wotan, Neue moderne Grotesk and Edel at Wagner companies/foundries, or – among many others – as Aurora at Weber, Accidenz-Grotesk (later Akzidenz-Grotesk and Normal Grotesk) at Haas, Breite halbfette Grotesk P at Böttger/Berthold, Elite-Grotesk at Poppelbaum, Favorit-Grotesk at Weisert, Moderne Grotesk at AG Schriftguss, Klassische Grotesk at Trennert Altona, Saturn at Schriftguss AG / Brüder Butter, Salon-Grotesk at Stempel, Cairoli from Nebiolo, Scania at Berling, or Grotesca Ideal at Gans (names differ depending on style/weight)." No official digitisation of Normal-Grotesk has been published as retail typeface so far. As of 2017, it remains commercially available as metal type tooling for bookbinding.

References

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External links

List of styles
on the

Klingspor Museum The Klingspor-Museum is a museum in Offenbach, Germany, specializing in the art of modern book production, typography and type. It includes a collection of fine art books from Karl Klingspor, one of the owners of Klingspor Type Foundry in Off ...

website
Fonts in Use

Specimen book
digitised by Stephen Coles, c. 1954 Grotesque sans-serif typefaces Letterpress typefaces Linotype typefaces