Claudia Toosey

Max Salzmann’s blackletter font released by Schelter & Giesecke in 1912 revived and spiced up with some beautiful filling and framing ornaments.

We cannot imagine anyone not liking beer. Especially on a warm summer night there is simply little that can top an ice cold brewski. And with the current wave of home-brewed ales and lagers, Vette Letters decided to not stay behind and brew its own brand. Just so we can design our own beer bottle label using our own font. VLNL Thueringer comes from the drawing board of Jacques Le Bailly (a.k.a. Baron von Fonthausen), the German-French specialist in the fields of both beer and type design. One day Jacques got inspired by Albrecht Dürers 15th century Fraktur (blackletter) alphabet, and decided to design a contemporary rounded version of it. Although the historic context is clearly visible, Thueringer definitely stands its own ground. It’s a modern techno-style blackletter with a (beer)truckload of interesting design details. Thueringer contains a number of ligatures and an alternate set of numbers.
Apart from the regular uses like logos, posters, flyers and headlines we definitely would like to see our Thueringer used on beer bottle labels and crates, but also cafés and hipster bars would do well with this modern-day blackletter. Hell, even wine or liquor labels, football team jerseys, Oktoberfest flyers, it’s just too much to mention. As long as it is accompanied by a cold beer.

Mezalia is a one of a kind typeface. Its shapes were strongly influenced by bastarda scripts of high medieval times. Unlike most fonts sharing similar origin, Mezalia is not just another blackletter but a fully functional text typeface, blending medieval poise and character with modern sensibilities. Stroke widths, imitating a broad nibbed pen of a scribe, fluctuate constantly giving paragraphs a characteristic vibrating texture. Despite it’s strong character Mezalia is very legible and will be an excellent choice for a book or an elegant magazine.

Mezalia has two distinct styles: straight and cursive (true italic if you will, although the word is not really correct here), which come in seven weights, from thin to black. Each weight contains a set of old-style figures, lining figures, small caps and ligatures. A separate style containing drop-cap initials is also available.