Responses by Christoph Koeberlin and Gabriel Richter, typeface designers, Fontwerk.
Background: “We wanted to design a typeface based on a classic idea but reinterpret it in as many ways as possible in a contemporary, personal way: Design, family expansion, character set, presentation,” says Christoph Koeberlin.
“We wanted to create a versatile grotesque that combines the robustness of early grotesque typefaces with modern style—to create a large font family whose subfamilies provide added design value,” says Gabriel Richter. “The target group is anyone who wants to work with robust grotesque fonts.”
Design thinking: “In terms of design, Tausend consistently focuses on two visual sizes,” says Koeberlin. “In addition to the versatile core family, Tausend Plakat is an uncompromising display variant. With TooBlack, there is a boldness level that goes beyond the boldest weights of other typefaces. With Soft, Stencil and the historically rooted Shaded, the family is very broadly based. Additionally, thanks to the Latin-M character set, it supports not only African languages and Vietnamese but also the entire DIN 91379 standard—and, of course, in a contemporary variable font.”
Challenges: “The sheer size of the project,” says Koeberlin. “In particular, what required special care was the extreme TooBlack styles and the shadows of the Shaded family, especially in the bolder styles where space was in a shortage. The fact that everything also had to work in a variable font format presented us with additional problems; this was particularly difficult with the Stencil family, which not only has a weight axis but also a stencil axis for the width of the bridges.”
“For myself, designing the Shaded,” says Richter. “Apart from that, finding when we had time and energy for the typeface at the same time.”
Favorite details: “We are particularly proud of the wonderful teamwork that ultimately made the project possible,” says Koeberlin. “We worked in pairs on the type design and shot the short videos in our respective homes in Berlin and Fukuoka. The fact that everything works and looks good is down to many other great people: Andreas Frohloff, whose design feedback was, as always, very valuable; Ivo Gabrowitsch, Jana Heinz and Sandra Winkelmann, who were responsible for the marketing campaign; and Lucy Beckley, Sebastian Carewe and Jürgen Siebert, who put Tausend’s extensive story into clear words.”
“That we have created an extended family that doesn’t just go wide, but offers different styles,” says Richter.
New lessons: “You learn something new with every new typeface. What initially sounds like a simple idea grows into something complex that presents you with challenges in many areas,” Koeberlin says. “We went to the limit with the design—especially in the TooBlack weights and Shaded family—as well as technically, where the large character sets and variable fonts required a lot of patience. The web store was not prepared for Tausend’s complexity in every respect, but in the end, it was especially nice to learn that anything is possible in a good team.”
“For me, it was namely how another designer—in this case, Christoph—makes certain decisions in the bold stroke weights to do justice to the white space, e.g. that the crossbar of the lowercase f on the right-hand side is slightly thinner,” says Richter. “Furthermore, the language expansion according to the DIN 91379 standard was also new to me.”
Specific project demands: “When two people work on a typeface, they each bring their own ideas to the table; in our case, this mainly resulted in technical complexity and a large character set,” says Koeberlin. “While I place particular emphasis on a wide range of foreign languages and sophisticated variable font functionality, Gabriel can’t do without a set of superscript letters and circled numerals.”
“The time difference between us two designers in Berlin and Fukuoka helped a lot,” says Richter. “We were able to play a good game of ping-pong with the files without hindering each other’s work.”
Time constraints: “Drawing only the upright position took some of the pressure off in terms of time,” explains Richter. “The division of the different styles was then a good thing.”
Browse Projects
Click on an image to view more from each project
