LL Beans
Lineto · Dieter Zembsch, Charles Grant · 2008
A digital reedition of Dieter Zembsch's 1973 Letraset competition winner, redrawn by Charles Grant and expanded by Sascha Bente, with original and new characters accessible via OpenType stylistic sets.
About
Originally drawn in secret at a German cosmetics company and submitted to Letraset's 1973 International Typeface Competition, where it was judged by Roger Excoffon, Herb Lubalin and Armin Hofmann among others. The typeface vanished from the Letraset catalogue by 1977, surfacing again only in the memory of obscure soul and reggae album sleeves. The 2020 edition by Sascha Bente completed the character set and reworked the design, while preserving Zembsch's original letterforms behind caps lock and routing new alternates through OpenType stylistic sets.
Classification
Originally drawn with ruler and compass in the early 1970s and published by Letraset, Beans is a quirky geometric display typeface with stylistic alternates, built for expressive headline use rather than text setting.