entry
Introduction to the Dark Arts

2 June, 2024

1,000 words

State: More of an Idea

Blackletter

Blackletter, Fraktur, Gothic are names for a style of typefaces that were in use in western Europe from around 1150 to the 1940ies. Details on the style, its history and why it disappeared from use see Blackletter on Wikipedia.

In Switzerland, it's mainly used to show, that something has tradition (e.g., newspapers), as housenumbers and signs in the old town (where it has probably in use in the olden times). It also seems to match nicely with tattoo and piercing shops. While initially usage was as a daily typeface, it nowadays has a special connotation and it's hard to sell chocolate coated apples with a blackletter typeface without giving it some "Snow White evil queen"-vibe.

Apparently, this is a bit different in Mexico, where Blackletter is still alive. It's used in handpainted signs on storefronts, cars and so on. Check The Mysterious Case of the Shapeshifting Poblano Blackletter with Jesús Barrientos, where a presentation of samples is given at the letterform archive.

It's that presentation, that prompted me to try making a typeface similar to the style.

Contrast between black and white

To my eyes fraktur has an interesting contrast between the black lines and white spaces inbetween. While most blackletter tends to be a bit edgy, there is a typeface called rotunda, where less decoration and rounder forms have been used. Rotunda also has this calligraphy-feel but looks a bit friendlier - at least to my eyes. Still it has this interesting rythm, that gives blackletter its style.

I've been trying to incorporate some of the rotunda forms. The samples I found in the web have mostly been in latin. Thus some letters have been missing.

Other letters have sometimes been so far from their current counterparts, that legibility was becoming tricky. This was mainly problematic with upper case, where samples have been highly decorated, had different elements than lower case, contrast and so on. While combinations were nice in single words, upper case did not really fit or match lower case in a longer text. I couldn't shake the impression, that these forms have again been mainly used in latin texts, where upper case is mostly used at the beginning of a sentence or paragraph. In these samples, more flourish and decoration did not hinder legibility, while in german texts vastly different letterforms hinder the uniformity of or rythm in a block of text. Most of the time, the contrast between upper and lower case was very different. Maybe I just couldn't find the correct samples.

Also, getting nice references for numbers (in matching style) is tricky, and symbols (i.e., #, @) are obviously very hard if not impossible to find. As blackletter was often a nordic or german typeface or used in latin texts, accents seemed tricky to find. Using the calligraphic style, it's hard to make small details and stay in style - cedillas, circles and so on need a lot of work.

Fancy letters and combinations

In contrary to these rare or missing glyphs, there seems to be no end to additional letters we no longer use today in older scripts..

An example is the r rotunda, a calligraphic variant of the letter r, only used after letter with round endforms like o, b, p, h (but also other letters depending on typeface).

Another example is the letter s, where depending on place in the word a long or a round s was used (also in combination with a second s).

There are also combinations, ligatures we are still using today. Looking around for examples during holidays, I noticed additional "special" combinations that I have never seen in other places (e.g., a NE-ligature in France).

I'm pretty sure, there is even more.