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)