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Irrlicht FONT Download

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Irrlicht downloadDesigner: Christian Heinrich Kleukens
Publisher: Aarhaus
Irrlicht is based on C. H. Kleukens’ 1923 typeface Judith Type. Whilst Dunkle Irrlicht is a fairly faithful rendition and extension of Kleukens’ typeface, the Licht style was initially added as a stand-alone stencil version; yet, the two styles work perfectly together – for different nuances, for emphasis or simply stacked/layered.

Irrlicht is equipped with upper- and lowercase ligatures, contextual and stylistic alternates, fractions, superior and inferior figures, extended language support and a few extra goodies.

Additional information – How Irrlicht came to life

Christian Heinrich Kleukens cut his Judith Type in 1923, at the peak of German expressionism, exclusively for publications with the Ernst-Ludwig-Press, such as a limited series of biblical prints – the first being the Book of Judith, hence the original’s name.

I stumbled upon this typeface a couple of years ago in a beautifully printed 1930 booklet of the Gutenberg-Gesellschaft and was struck by its forceful darkness on paper and its seemingly simple, crude letterforms. The lack of a long-ſ in Judith Type, quite unusual for a German typeface of that time, adds to this feel of crudeness and spontaneity*. Judith Type seemed to me like a semi-blackletter cousin of Rudolf Koch’s typeface Neuland, also from 1923. Besides its apparent affinity with expressionism, it reflects a lot of that deeply spiritual craftsmanship of the era – much like Neuland.

A few months later, when I was working on a stencil project and looking for a typeface that could be cut into thin wooden plates easily, I remembered those dark, sharp letters that seemed to lack any curves at all.

After enlarging a few letters and tracing them by hand, I began to redraw the whole set digitally, using only straight lines. As for spacing, the goal was to keep the letters tight but to avoid touching characters – without ironing out all the tension and rhythm. Deliberate kerning, subtle contextual alternates and ligatures help to deal with critical glyph combinations.

Two additional versions were developed: a stencil version with open counters and, in reference to a popular style of the 1920s and inspired by dry, cracked wood, an inline version. These two additional styles were later merged into one font – thus, Lichte** Irrlicht was born. — AARHAUS

* Consequently, the original typeface’s German eszett is simply a ligature of the “round s” and standard z. In some of his publications, Kleukens dispenses with using eszett altogether and sets double s instead. Irrlicht, however, does feature a more common eszett (ß); the original, among other more faithful letter forms, can be accessed via the stylistic sets feature

** licht – literally bright – being the German term for inline typefaces – not to be confused with leicht (light)


Irrlicht Font Preview
art blackletter broken dark expressionism expressionist german hands headline inline lithography loud manicule no curves poster sharp stencil symbol ultra woodcut
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