Typeface Reissue for LL Jumping Jack

From rub-down decal to digital revival — a 45-year journey

LL Jumping Jack is a revival of Dieter Zembsch's 1975 dry-transfer typeface, originally published by Mecanorma. The design features overlapping letterform components with small round holes representing the joints of the toy it references. Charles Grant began the digital adaptation in 2011, and Sascha Bente at Lineto completed and expanded it in 2019, with the family released in 2020. Font engineering and mastering was handled by Alphabet, Berlin.

Set in LL Jumping Jack

Insights

Zembsch won Letraset's 1973 type design competition with Beans, then published Jumping Jack with Mecanorma in 1975.
Overlapping components with round hole details directly mimic the pivot joints of an actual jumping-jack figure.
During digitisation, Charles Grant explored many alternates based on the original geometric-modular system; those exceeding a legibility threshold were discarded.
The 2011 digital version was shelved for years due to an incomplete character set before Bente overhauled and completed it in 2019.