VEB Typoart was the only

type foundry A type foundry is a company that designs or distributes typefaces. Before digital typography, type foundries manufactured and sold metal and wood typefaces for hand typesetting, and matrices for line-casting machines like the Linotype and ...

East Germany East Germany, officially known as the German Democratic Republic (GDR), was a country in Central Europe from Foundation of East Germany, its formation on 7 October 1949 until German reunification, its reunification with West Germany (FRG) on ...

. It was a

state-owned enterprise A state-owned enterprise (SOE) is a business entity created or owned by a national or local government, either through an executive order or legislation. SOEs aim to generate profit for the government, prevent private sector monopolies, provide goo ...

Volkseigener Betrieb The Publicly Owned Enterprise (; abbreviated VEB) was the main legal form of industrial enterprise in East Germany. These state-owned enterprise were all publicly owned and were formed after mass nationalisation between 1945 and the early 1960s, ...

") located in

Dresden Dresden (; ; Upper Saxon German, Upper Saxon: ''Dräsdn''; , ) is the capital city of the States of Germany, German state of Saxony and its second most populous city after Leipzig. It is the List of cities in Germany by population, 12th most p ...

. The foundry's most influential

art director Art director is a title for a variety of similar job functions in theater, advertising, marketing, publishing, fashion, live-action and animated film and television, the Internet, and video games. It is the charge of a sole art director to supe ...

s were Herbert Thannhäuser (until 1963) and Albert Kapr (until 1987).

History

VEB Typoart was created by the government of the

German Democratic Republic East Germany, officially known as the German Democratic Republic (GDR), was a country in Central Europe from Foundation of East Germany, its formation on 7 October 1949 until German reunification, its reunification with West Germany (FRG) on ...

in 1948 through a merger of several nationalised type foundries, including Schelter & Giesecke (1945), Schriftguss AG (1951), Ludwig Wagner AG (1961), and Norddeutsche Schriftgießerei (1961). Originally called Schriftguß KG Dresden (1945) and VEB Schriftguß Dresden (1958), the enterprise was renamed to VEB Typoart in 1951. From 1970, it was subordinated to '' Zentrag'', a state enterprise coordinating all GDR printing activity. Typoart's principal mission was to create

typeface A typeface (or font family) is a design of Letter (alphabet), letters, Numerical digit, numbers and other symbols, to be used in printing or for electronic display. Most typefaces include variations in size (e.g., 24 point), weight (e.g., light, ...

s for Eastern Germany and other

Eastern Bloc The Eastern Bloc, also known as the Communist Bloc (Combloc), the Socialist Bloc, the Workers Bloc, and the Soviet Bloc, was an unofficial coalition of communist states of Central and Eastern Europe, Asia, Africa, and Latin America that were a ...

countries. It was frequently ordered to plagiarise Western typefaces that Zentrag could not afford to license. In the course of

German reunification German reunification () was the process of re-establishing Germany as a single sovereign state, which began on 9 November 1989 and culminated on 3 October 1990 with the dissolution of the East Germany, German Democratic Republic and the int ...

, Typoart was privatised as Typoart GmbH in 1990 and went bankrupt in 1995 after a negotiated sale to

Compugraphic Compugraphic Corporation, commonly called cg, was an American producer of typesetting systems and phototypesetting equipment, based in Wilmington, Massachusetts, a few miles from where it was founded. This company is distinct from Compugraphics, ...

fell through. Many of Typoart's fonts and other works were lost at this time, including original matrices of Tschichold's type Saskia, although employees managed to save some

matrices Matrix (: matrices or matrixes) or MATRIX may refer to: Science and mathematics * Matrix (mathematics), a rectangular array of numbers, symbols or expressions * Matrix (logic), part of a formula in prenex normal form * Matrix (biology), the ...

, original drawings and digital data. After this, the copyright status of Typoart's typefaces remained uncertain. Some have been reissued in digital form by other type foundries, mostly by Elsner & Flake. Some of Typoart's matrices are preserved at the ''Museum für Druckkunst Leipzig''.

Typefaces

Typoart's typefaces included:

References

*
Myfonts.com entry for VEB Typoart

External links

{{commons category

(with a full list of typefaces)
Typoart-Freunde
Letterpress font foundries of Germany Cold type foundries Volkseigene Betriebe Design companies established in 1948 1948 establishments in Germany Design companies disestablished in 1995 German companies disestablished in 1995 German companies established in 1948 Manufacturing companies based in Dresden