DIN 1451 TYPEFACE NARROW

DIN 1451
TYPEFACE
REGULAR
DIN 1451 TYPEFACE NARROW vs
helvetica
DIN 1451 TYPEFACE REGULAR vs helvetica
FE SCHRIFT vs helvetica
• DIN 1451 is a sans-serif typeface that is widely used for traffic,
administrative and technical applications.[1]
• It was defined by the German standards body DIN - Deutsches Institut für
Normung (German Institute for Standardization) in the standard sheet DIN
1451-Schriften (typefaces) in 1931.[2] Similar standards existed for
stencilled letters.[3]
• Originally designed for industrial uses, the first DIN-type fonts were a
simplified design that could be applied with limited technical difficulty. Due
to the design's legibility and uncomplicated, unadorned design, it has
become popular for general purpose use in signage and display
adaptations. Many adaptations and expansions of the original design have
been released digitally
DIN HISTORY
• DIN has a long and interesting history. Its origins go back to the “IV
44” type sheet defined by the Royal Prussian Rail Administration (the
Königlich Preußische Eisenbahn-Verwaltung, or KPEV) in 1905 for use
on its trains, schematics, and blueprints. However, it was quickly
expanded for use on all sorts of lettering, including names of railway
stations on platforms. In this way it became associated with the KPEV
as a kind of corporate typeface1 and in full public view. Following the
foundation of the Weimar Republic and unification of the patchwork
of German states, the merger of all state railways in 1920 ensured the
widespread use of the KPEV typeface across Germany.
• Popularity of the typeface grew beyond this original context because
it (unintentionally) embodied many of the ideological principles in
play in Europe at the time – Realism and Modernism in particular –
which attempted to scrape away as much of the cultural references
and adornments in as many things as possible, and reduce them
down to a purely functional, utilitarian form. This included everything
from objects like buildings, furniture, books, art, and music (and, of
course, typefaces), to philosophy, science, mathematics, and politics.
As a result, several versions of the KPEV typeface began appearing for
distribution and use outside of the railway system. The first was
released by the D Stempel AG foundry in 1923, with another version
by Berthold following in 1929.2
• What artists and designers were responding to in the KPEV typeface was its
ability to be a neutral and objective bearer of information, free of the
social and cultural baggage carried by other typefaces. For instance, most
books were printed with only a handful of serif3 typefaces, and so
eventually those typefaces became associated with elitism and social
inequality. The KPEV typeface, however, had no serifs at all (making is a
sans serif typeface) which was somewhat rare at the time, but becoming
more common by the early 20th century. It did not vary in its stroke widths,
and had no other flourishes or details. It was pure, direct, matter-of-fact,
and unbiased, and therefore could be ‘read’ by everyone. Even more – to
the glee of Modernist and Constructivist designers – KPEV’s letter-forms
were based on a grid, rather than being derived from human hand-stroke
letter-forms. It was a typeface for the machine age, a typeface for the
people… a typeface for a new Germany
• Indeed, from as early as 1917 the German Standards Committee
(Deutsches Institut für Normung, or DIN) was working on a universal
lettering to be used across the country, both to reflect the uniformity
of the new republic, but also to ensure a standard of quality and
efficiency. The first standards document concerning letter-forms, DIN
16, was issued in 1919, outlining lettering standards for technical
applications. Like the KPEV typeface, DIN 6 was based on a grid and
therefore had a consistent stroke width in order to ensure that it
could be replicated by any number of tools, from a technician’s pen
and engraving tools to compasses and rulers. DIN 17 was released
later as a standard for lettering with drawing pens, following the same
principles.4
• Development of the DIN 1451 standard began around 1924, drawing
directly from the lettering system established by the KPEV. With the
first release in 1936, this document set the standard for essentially all
public lettering across Germany, from road and traffic signs to house
numbers and license plates, establishing it as the “Autobahn”
typeface. DIN standards practically achieved legal status in September
1939, the very month Germany invaded Poland and sparked World
War II. As such, use of DIN 1451 was subsequently dictated by an
administrative order, and it was “introduced” into most occupied
countries.
• Even from the 1930’s, DIN 1451 had been used on all German military
objects – on its planes and tanks, even bomb shelters – but the DIN
institute carefully kept itself out of political affairs. Perhaps because
of this, DIN 1451 never appeared in Nazi propaganda and never was
connected to the Nazi Party. Instead, Futura was usually used for this
unfortunate chore.6
• Perhaps also because of DIN’s political aloofness, the 1451 standard
continued to be used and revised after the war, even into the 1990’s.
It remains today as Germany’s ‘official’ typeface.
• The principles of a grid-based uniform stroke give DIN lettering an
important distinction in the world of typography. DIN lettering was
not so much ‘designed’ as it was ‘formulated’ for technical purposes,
completely outside of the tradition of typography up until that point.
In fact, its insistence on a consistent stroke was contradictory to the
typographic tradition, wherein it was assumed that varying stroke
widths can enable optimal word-images and therefore wasn’t taken
seriously by typographers. And since the designers and artists who
championed the KPEV typeface and other grid-based lettering had
been shut down by the Nazis in the early 1930’s, DIN 1451 was rarely
used beyond its intended role.7
• However, in the late 1980’s designers (again) started using DIN 1451 in
magazines and posters, taking something as banal as state lettering and
flipping into a new artistic context. German type designer Erik Spiekermann
noticed this trend with curiosity for, like his predecessors, he had always
considered the typeface ‘unuseable’ for graphic design purposes.
Spiekermann suggested to his colleague Albert-Jan Pool that he should
make something useful out of DIN 1451.8
• The result was a family of five weights (and real italics) released by the
FontFont foundry in 1995, called FF DIN. The differences are minor when
viewed up close, but significant to the typeface on the whole: slightly
narrower horizontals, and slightly more fluid curves. Finally, 90 years after
its inception, it had been ‘designed’ – and therefore became ‘useable’
• DIN is being used all over the world in a wide variety of contexts, not least
of which is in our own City of Thunder Bay identity. It is celebrated for
being clean, modern, bold, and striking – it looks contemporary, and just
feels strong. You might say it is simply straight-forward and (as Pool puts it
above) it “tells the truth.” Its impersonal and neutral character allows it to
merely be there like a typographic backbone, letting everything else in the
design and layout do the talking.
• However, Pool wonders if DIN “is something that works in Germany, but it
wouldn’t work the same way for example in Britain, because they use a
more decorative style.”9 Some observers say that its “impersonal” and
“neutral” character gives very little information about the character of its
subject; after all, it was designed (or ‘formulated’, rather) for efficiency,
uniformity, and the blunt transmission of information.
FE SCHRIFT
• The FE typeface, developed in 1978-1980 by Karlgeorg Hoefer for the
German Federal Highway Research Institute, has been used as the typeface
for German vehicle number plates since 1994. This typeface has no uniform
proportions. Every letter has its own unique appearance and does not
derive – as is usually the case – from other letter forms. This is intended to
make forgery more difficult.
• The FE typeface was designed to be difficult to forge and easily machine-
readable; number plates should allow automatic number plate recognition
and evaluation. The new plates were introduced in the course of issuing
the new European number plates. Depending on the number of letters, the
variants close-spaced, medium-spaced and small medium-spaced are
available. In 2000, the FE typeface completely replaced its predecessor DIN
1451 after a transition phase
DIN 1451 VS FE SCHRIFT
FE SCHRIFT
• ALL LETTERS FIT IN A THIN RECTANGLE
• LETTERS WITH UMLAUT ARE SMALLER VERSIONS
M AND W NOT THE SAME WHEN ROTATED
CROSSBAR ON H IS SLIGHTLY ABOVE THE
CENTRE LINE AND WELL BELOW ON LETTER A
L AND J NOT THE SAME LEGS…L IS UPTURNED
FLAT, J IS UPTURNED ROUND
A and V NOT THE SAME WHEN REVERSED…V
HAS SLIGHTLY FATTER BASE
LETTER S IS ROUNDER AND SMALLER ON THE
TOP AND FLATTENED AT THE BOTTOM
LETTER R HAS A SQUARED EYE THAT IS LEFT OPEN
WITH A SQUARE AND TRIANGULAR NEGATIVE
SPACE. THE LEG JOINT IS DISTNIGUISHABLE
LETTERS D AND P HAVE SERIFS
THE CENTRE OF X IS ABOVE THE MIDDLE LINE AND
THE NEGATIVE SPACE THEREFORE LESS ON TOP
LETTER C IS SQUARED AT TOP AND ROUNDED AT
BOTTOM, LIKE A SQUARE CIRCLE ON TOP OF A
ROUNDER CIRCLE BUT WHICH DO NOT
PROPORTIONALLY MEET
LETTER C DROPS DOWN MORE AT AN ANGLE MORE THAN G AND CANNOT BE MADE INTO A LETTER
O. THE ARM ON G IS SLIGHTLY FATTER THAN THE OTHER SIDES AND IF THE NEGATIVE SPACE WERE
CLOSED WOULD FIT ON ONE SIDE WITH SLIGHTLY MORE WEIGHT TO THE RIGHT.
LETTER F HAS A SLIGHTLY ROUNDED CORNER AND THE ARM IS
LOWER THAN THE MID LINE