ABC Walter
Dinamo Typefaces · Dinamo (Renan Rosatti, Arnaud Chemin) & Omnigroup (Simon Mager & Leonardo Azzolini)
A scholarly revival of Walter Kach's mid-century lettering teaching tool, in faithful Walter Alte cuts plus an extended Walter Neue family with mono.
About
A Swiss grotesque revival by Dinamo (Renan Rosatti, Arnaud Chemin) and Omnigroup (Simon Mager and Leonardo Azzolini), built not from a finished typeface but from Walter Kach's mid-twentieth-century lettering teaching tool. Walter Alte is a faithful study of Kach's lessons in cuts including Rauchwaren, Normalgrotesk, Roentgentherapie, Stahlbau and Plakat; Walter Alte Roentgentherapie carries the highest contrast, Normalgrotesk is the most constructed and mono-linear, and Rauchwaren sits in between, recalling the way Kach's work fertilised the Helvetica empire. Walter Neue extends Kach's teachings into a fourteen-style family with seven weights, italics and stylistic alternates, plus Walter Neue Mono; high contrast appears only in the heaviest weights, with rounded dots and friendlier punctuation.
Classification
Dinamo describe Walter as a long-standing scholarly revival not based on a pre-existing typeface but on a tool used to teach students how to draw letterforms, designed by Swiss type educator Walter Kach in the mid-twentieth century. Walter Alte is a faithful study of Kach's lessons; Walter Neue is an extension and update.