The idea for this completely new font design with overlapping characters came when Axel Stoltenberg, longtime IKARUS program developer at URW + +, visited a restaurant. As it can be seen quite often , the daily specials were offered handwritten with chalk on a blackboard applying a writing technique never been available before for digital fonts: each character is partly covered by its predecessor creating a three-dimensional effect. The implementation of this unusual notation for digital setting required a lot of programming and testing until all necessary character variants were produced and set properly always using the correct form. In order to achieve this, the OpenType Pro font ThreeDee contains about 12,400 characters and all the necessary OpenType features (GSUB ) for the automatic setting in OTF savvy application programs.

The slightly playful basic design for ThreeDee was created by Anna Stoltenberg , the daughter of Axel, specially devised for the innovative representation and support of its special nature. The shadow generated with IKARUS even intensifies the 3D effect. As is well-known, making use of the embedded OTF features, i.e. the automatic access to all the 12,400 character variants , a corresponding text / layout program ( InDesign, Quark Xpress, current Open / LibreOffice or MS Word etc. ) is required. ThreeDee is a headline font that will unveil all its charisma and exceptional quality at appropriate, larger sizes.