Typeface Design for Lineto
5,000 glyph combinations to simulate a single hand
LL Blankenhorn is a family of three digital script fonts based on the post-war German hand-lettering of Fritz Blankenhorn (1921–2011), in-house designer at Deutscher Bücherbund whose work appeared on covers including Max Frisch's Homo Faber (1957) and all the best-selling Johannes Mario Simmel novels from 1962 onward. Designed by Tobias-David Albert and released by Lineto in 2019, the project began in 2008 but required a qualified calligrapher with digital type experience to advance. Albert identified three stylistic threads in Blankenhorn's covers and drew over 5,000 unique glyph combinations so that letters contextually adjust shape and position to neighbours, producing script that composes dynamically rather than from fixed individual glyphs.
Set in LL Blankenhorn
Insights
- An early traced version begun in 2008 was judged static and lacking the energy of the originals; subsequent vector recreations of fluid letter combinations proved laborious and produced awkward results, stalling the project for years.
- Albert identified three distinct stylistic threads across Blankenhorn's book covers, forming the basis for the family's three script variants.
- More than 5,000 unique OpenType glyph combinations and ligatures allow each letter to adjust shape and position relative to its neighbours, so letterforms only fully resolve in context.
- Diacritic support was carefully optimised for 26 specific Latin-script languages beyond the full Latin character set.
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