Rudolf Koch began drawing the Offenbach typeface in 1928, the first size was cut in 1931, and Koch made final corrections on his deathbed in 1934. The type was published from 6 to 60 pt posthumously by Gebr. Klingspor foundry in 1935. Stylistically, Offenbach is a hybrid, pairing wide roman capitals with narrow gothic minuscules, a mixture Koch had experienced in several of his typefaces like Jessen or Wallau. His student Hans Kühne had added to the Klingspor release the ‘German’ gothic capitals as alternative to the roman capitals. Offenbach is a faithful revival of Offenbach Mager, the initial thin weight, based on a one-week workshop in 2022 under the direction of Jérôme Knebusch. The students of the HfG Offenbach studied the archive material in the Klingspor Museum and lead type in the nearby printing workshop in the Bernardbau. The Offenbach typeface is freely usable by anyone, privately or professionally, under the Creative Commons CC BY-ND 4.0 license. This licence allows free use of the font, provided that the type and author are mentioned when using it (Offenbach by Rudolf Koch) and that no modification is made to its design.

ARTEM, which stands for Art, Technology and Management, is an original initiative set up by the École nationale supérieure d'art et de design de Nancy, ICN Business School and Mines Nancy. It combines the creation and the integration of new technologies with a managerial, strategic, economic and legal perspective. By crossing cultures – of the scientist or engineer from Mines Nancy, that of the manager from ICN Business School, and that of the artist or designer from the École nationale supérieure d'art et de design de Nancy – the Artem Alliance invites students to think outside the box by plunging them into the heart of issues and logics that are a priori far removed from their field of excellence. The exclusive custom typeface was commissioned successively between 2007 and 2017. The main idea and concept of Artem's graphic identity lies in the shared use of an exclusive typeface. Rather than stamping documents, it is a shared voice that speaks through the typeface. With a linear, pragmatic design based on Johnston (Edward Johnston, 1916), it has the distinctive feature of mixing capitals and lower case letters. Known as unicase (a single typographic case), the capitals of the acronym ARTEM blend in as small capitals among the lower case letters. There is no real set of capitals. The typeface is available in five weights: Thin, Light, Regular, Bold and Black. It is designed for headlines and short texts, where the design is as visible as it is readable. It is used throughout the Artem campus, for signage and on-screen and printed documents. See also the extension Artem Bureau on this website.

Erhard Ratdolt was one of the most successful and acclaimed printers of the 15th century. He was also a pioneer of new techniques and in 1486 he printed the earliest known type specimen. In this essay Riccardo Olocco analyses the only surviving copy of this single sheet with a discussion on the circumstances of its production and descriptions and identifications of the roman and rotunda types according to existing bibliographical references. The pamphlet is accompanied by a facsimile of the original type specimen. Edited by Alice Savoie and Jérôme Knebusch in the Poem Pamphlet series.

Koch Lichte Grotesk is the newest revival of Lichte Neuland by Rudolf Koch, designed by Edvinas Žukauskas and Jérôme Knebusch and published by Poem for Neuland’s centenary in 2023. Lichte Neuland appeared five years after Neuland in 1928, in the Gebr. Klingspor specimen dedicated to the American market by the Continental Typefounders Association. Koch Lichte Grotesk is an accurate revival of the 12 pt Cicero size, the smallest one. It is currently the only fully identified original size, as shown on the 1928 index card of the German Association of Typefounders. This association was founded at the beginning of the 20th century and most German type foundries were members. It served to represent their interests in economic, political and legal matters. A secondary source are the Lichte Neuland Cicero letters from the letterpress workshop P98A, Berlin. Koch Lichte Grotesk is available in four fonts: 12 Cicero, 12 Cicero Plain, 12 Cicero Inline and 12 Cicero Line. 10% of licence purchases are deposited each year as flowers on Koch's grave.

The book brings together researchers from the fields of typography, palaeography and incunabula studies, with a particular focus on type and letterforms. The relatively understudied period – after Gutenberg and before the consolidation of Jenson’s model – extends from the earliest traces of ‘humanistic’ tendencies to ‘pure’ roman type, including many cases of uncertain or experimental design, voluntary hybridisation and proto- or archaic roman. In 1459 in Mainz, Johann Fust and Peter Schöffer printed the Rationale Divinorum Officiorum by Guillaume Durand, using a typeface (now known as ‘Durandus’) that looked like no other before. From that point, we can follow a wide variety of developments, partly related to the travels of early printers from the Rhine area to Italy and France. By extension, the private press movement initiated by William Morris and Emery Walker at the end of the nineteenth century in England, revived some of those typefaces before they were once more largely forgotten.

Of all the title fonts from the Klingspor type foundry, Neuland was probably the most frequently used abroad. But how was it produced? A letter Koch sent to Ernst Kellner in 1922 raises more questions than it answers, and designers have speculated for nearly half a century about whether Koch really cut the hallmarks without any preparation. Dan Reynolds has examined the various sources; Edvinas Žukauskas and Jérôme Knebusch have digitised the different sizes for the first time. The essay Making Neuland and the typeface Koch Grotesk were published by Poem for Neuland’s centenary in 2023. Conference held at ENSAD Nancy, 28 November 2023. It was recorded, link below.

One week workshop at Hochschule Mainz with Bachelor students. Design of a full digital alphabet with predefined geometric modules.