Neue moderne Grotesk
Forgotten Shapes · Stephan Müller · 2011
A digital revival of the 1908 Wagner & Schmidt grotesque, the same matrix-distributed design that circulated across Europe as Aurora-Grotesk, Akzidenz-Grotesk and Cairoli, among others.
About
Stephan Müller's revival, developed between 2011 and 2019, traces the grotesque back to its source: the Leipzig punchcutting firm Wagner & Schmidt, which sold matrices to foundries throughout Europe rather than casting type itself. The same design appeared under at least nine different names across Germany, Austria, Italy and Sweden before the Haas foundry reworked it into what became Akzidenz-Grotesk. Five weights from Thin to Black, each with a matching italic, cover the family's pre-digital range in a form suited to contemporary use.
Classification
A revival of a nineteenth-century German grotesque originally cut at Wagner & Schmidt in 1908 and distributed across Europe under many names including Aurora-Grotesk and Akzidenz-Grotesk. Its regularised, upright forms with minimal contrast are characteristic of the pre-Helvetica European grotesque tradition.