Typeface Design for Ruder Plakat Maxi
A revival started by a 77-year-old teacher working from personally archived proofs
A digital revival of Emil Ruder's wood-type poster font, originally developed with students at Allgemeine Gewerbeschule Basel in the early 1950s and used in the school's printshop until its closure in 2001. The digitisation was initiated by former typography teacher Hans-Christian Pulver, who at age 77 worked from proofs he had archived of the 20 Cicero size. Lineto refined Pulver's drawings with Arve Båtevik and released the family in 2022, with digital-to-analogue restoration work by Dafi Kühne of Babyinktwice and font engineering by Alphabet, Berlin.
Set in Ruder Plakat Maxi
Insights
- Pulver systematically transferred distinctive features across glyphs: the strong diagonal of 'S', 's', and '2' was applied to 'a', and the wide junction found in 'K' and 'k' was extended to 'X' and 'x'.
- The original wood type ranged from 6 to 48 Cicero (approximately 22 cm), a broader size range than the earlier condensed poster font available at the same school.
- Ruder's letterforms eliminate all calligraphic stroke variation, achieving strict alignment and an appearance of modular grid construction.
- Dafi Kühne of Babyinktwice performed digital-to-analogue restoration work; Båtevik then expanded the character set at Lineto using contemporary type design principles.
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