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Lineto · Hans-Christian Pulver, Arve Båtevik, Anatole Couteau · 2022
A variable digitisation of Emil Ruder's condensed wood type Plakatschrift, developed at Lineto with three axes and nearly 1,400,000 automatically kerned letter pairs.
About
Based on wood type developed by Emil Ruder with students at the Allgemeine Gewerbeschule Basel in the early 1950s and used widely in Swiss poster design from 1962 onwards, the font was digitised by Hans-Christian Pulver, a former Ruder student, alongside Arve Båtevik and Anatole Couteau. The variable version features 18 masters and three axes, with kerning automated via custom software written by Mathieu Reguer to handle the scale of pairs inherent to a thousand-glyph digital font. Released by Lineto in 2022, it traces a direct line from the Basel School's poster typography into contemporary variable font technology.
Classification
A digitisation of Emil Ruder's condensed wood type Plakatschrift, rooted in Swiss poster grotesque tradition. The compressed, high-contrast letterforms and poster-scale origin place it squarely in display use.