Trio Grotesk
Schick Toikka · Florian Schick, Lauri Toikka
A three-weight revival of Kaart Antieke (Lettergieterij Amsterdam, 1909) with italics, preserving letterpress ink-spread features and a wide, generously spaced design.
About
Trio Grotesk is a revival of Kaart Antieke, a small-size grotesque published by Lettergieterij Amsterdam in 1909 for society printing: copperplate engraved invitations, announcements, menus, stationery and calling cards. The face was used by Piet Zwart for his never officially published essay 'Van oude tot nieuwe typografie', and Florian Schick discovered the only two remaining copies at the Meermanno Museum in Den Haag. Rather than working from the metal type itself, Schick Toikka enlarged and examined the printed image to replicate the impression as faithfully as possible, preserving features unique to letterpress such as soft stroke endings and junctions caused by ink spread and pressure, alongside the wide stance, loose spacing and large lowercase required of such diminutive type. The single found style is expanded to three weights plus italics with Latin Extended character sets, OpenType figure sets and a batch of arrows, ornaments and dingbats.
Classification
Schick Toikka describe Trio Grotesk as a revival of Kaart Antieke, published by Lettergieterij Amsterdam in 1909, the small-size society-printing grotesk that Piet Zwart used for his unpublished essay 'Van oude tot nieuwe typografie'. Florian Schick discovered the only two remaining copies at the Meermanno Museum in Den Haag.