Normal-Grotesk
Forgotten Shapes · Stephan Müller · 2011
A digital revival by Stephan Müller of a 1908 Wagner & Schmidt grotesque that circulated across Europe under at least a dozen different names, most famously as Aurora-Grotesk and Akzidenz-Grotesk.
About
The original design was developed at the Leipzig punchcutting firm Wagner & Schmidt around 1908 and subsequently sold as matrices to foundries across Germany, Austria, Italy and Sweden, each issuing it under its own name. Haas in Münchenstein cast it as Accidenz-Grotesk in the 1910s, then expanded and reworked it in the 1950s under the name Normal-Grotesk. Stephan Müller's revival, developed between 2011 and 2019, recovers that specific Haas iteration across five weights from Thin to Black, each with a matching italic.
Classification
A revival of an early twentieth-century German grotesque originating at Wagner & Schmidt in 1908, circulated across Europe under many names; falls squarely within the historical grotesque tradition, sharing lineage with Akzidenz-Grotesk.