Permanent Headline is a bold, highly compressed

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 in the neo-grotesque style. It was designed by Karlgeorg Hoefer for the type foundry Ludwig & Mayer in

Frankfurt am Main Frankfurt am Main () is the most populous city in the States of Germany, German state of Hesse. Its 773,068 inhabitants as of 2022 make it the List of cities in Germany by population, fifth-most populous city in Germany. Located in the forela ...

. It was released from 1964 and later issued by a range of companies in

phototypesetting Phototypesetting is a method of Typesetting, setting type which uses photography to make columns of Sort (typesetting), type on a scroll of photographic paper. It has been made obsolete by the popularity of the personal computer and desktop publ ...

and

digital Digital usually refers to something using discrete digits, often binary digits. Businesses *Digital bank, a form of financial institution *Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) or Digital, a computer company *Digital Research (DR or DRI), a software ...

versions. Similar to other common newspaper typefaces intended to be compact, such as

Times New Roman Times New Roman is a serif typeface commissioned for use by the British newspaper ''The Times'' in 1931. It has become one of the most popular typefaces of all time and is installed on most personal computers. The typeface was conceived by Stanl ...

, the design has deliberately minimised descenders to save space. This distortion reaches an extreme level in Permanent Headline, with the descenders eliminated and tails such as the curve of the 'y' kept above the baseline. The

x-height upright 2.0, alt=A diagram showing the line terms used in typography In typography, the x-height, or corpus size, is the distance between the baseline and the mean line of lowercase letters in a typeface. Typically, this is the height of the le ...

(height of lower-case letters) is very high. The design is highly folded-up and condensed with narrow apertures, making the design harder to read at distance. Permanent Headline was also released in an "outlined" style and in versions with regular descenders. It was part of a larger “Permanent” sans-serif family without these attributes, which did not achieve such lasting popularity and has mostly not been digitised. In the United States it was initially released by Amsterdam Continental. Permanent Headline's highly compact, tightly spaced and industrial design is a prominent example of the aggressive, menacing style of graphic design that despite its poor legibility was popular in the 1960s and 70s, and was often used for purposes besides newspapers, such as book covers. It resembles other condensed designs (both typefaces and custom lettering) of the period, such as Schmalfette Grotesk (and its successor Haettenschweiler), Linotype's Helvetica Inserat and other German designs. Similar British designs from the period include

Letraset Letraset was a company known mainly for manufacturing sheets of typefaces and other artwork elements using the dry-transfer lettering method. Letraset was acquired by the Colart group and became part of its subsidiary Winsor & Newton. C ...

’s Compacta, Stephenson Blake’s

Impact Impact may refer to: * Impact (mechanics), a large force or mechanical shock over a short period of time * Impact, Texas, a town in Taylor County, Texas, US Science and technology * Impact crater, a meteor crater caused by an impact event * Imp ...

and

Matthew Carter Matthew Carter (born 1 October 1937) is an English type designer.A Man of Letters

’s masthead for ''

Private Eye ''Private Eye'' is a British fortnightly satirical and current affairs (news format), current affairs news magazine, founded in 1961. It is published in London and has been edited by Ian Hislop since 1986. The publication is widely recognised ...

''.

References

{{reflist, 30em

External links

Karlgeorg Hoefer
(memorial site, listing typefaces)
Fonts in Use - Permanent Headline
Neo-grotesque sans-serif typefaces Display typefaces