Mendoza, Groteaque

Grotesque is an early sans-serif font that was developed in the 19^th century. It was widely used and influenced many other typefaces that developed such as Helvetica and Univers. It is thought to be derived from Didot because of similar shapes and sizes after the serifs are removed. It was originally used as a term for sans-serif fonts in Britain and was commonly called “gothic” in the United States. They were named for their ugly appearance and many people felt as if the font itself was primitive especially coming from the classical era. Capital only faces of this style were first available from 1818 by William Caslon IV until 1832 when William Thorowgood produced the first sans-serif type with lowercase. It first emerged in the machine age and was used in display type, sign writing, and architectural handwriting. They were functional commercial faces designed for high impact. Other versions of grotsque were added in the late 1050’s to enlarge the typeface family. More sans-serif fonts developed through the 19^th century, but were only seen as display type until improvements in mechanized punch cutting were made, then more sans-serif fonts were designed specifically for text setting toward the end of the century.

The official designer of the typeface Grotesque is William Thorowgood, but I couldn’t find any history on him. So I decided to do the history on the company that it is associated with which is Berthold. Berthold was one of the largest and most successful type foundries in the world and has long been associated with type design. It was established in 1858 by Herman Berthold and was based in Berlin. The company introduced many new typefaces and was one of the main companies who developed typesetting machines. In 1993, Berthold ceased operations due to financial troubles, however Berthold Types Ltd. which is based in Chicago, now takes over the distribution of the Berthold digital type library.

One of the concepts for my booklet is American Red Cross. I read that the grotesque and georgia typefaces are the official typefaces of the american red cross and anything published by them must be made using either of the two typefaces. I was thinking of showing the different ways that the red cross helps people and the different ways that people can help and donate to them. Like providing shelter i could show cots w/ blankets and pillows or blood donations in bags or something. My other idea was doing different well known signs since it was used at first as display type and sign writing. i'm not sure layout wise how i'd accomplish this since with the big paragraphs like the history, but i'm thinking everything else could come from signs inspired by Vegas and NY or something.