Atelier Jérôme Knebusch
Mainzer Landstraße 105
60329 Frankfurt am Main
jk [at] jeromeknebusch.net
+49 69 15 61 60 23

Decode Old Arabian [North & South], custom typeface, Hochschule Mainz, 2016. decodeunicode.org

Accent sur Est, École Supérieure d’Art, Metz, 2008.

Visual identity and design of the symposium & exhibition Gotico-Antiqua, proto-roman, hybrid. 15th-century types between gothic and roman held at ENSAD Nancy in 2019. Design in French and English includes signage, poster, booklets and micro-website where you can find more information about the project (see link below). First use of the Almost typeface.

Title
Gotico-Antiqua, proto-roman, hybrid. 15th-century types between gothic and roman
Date
2019
Type
Research, Visual identity
Client
Atelier National de Recherche Typographique
Place
Nancy
Material
Exhibition, symposium, signage, poster, booklets
Website
gotico-antiqua.anrt-nancy.fr
Screenprint
Lézard Graphique, Brumath

Gotico-Antiqua, proto-roman, hybrid. 15th-century types between gothic and roman, symposium & exhibition, ANRT/ENSAD Nancy, 2019.

Decode Blockdock is a font which integrates a representative, uniformed glyph for each encoded Unicode block. Commissioned by Johannes Bergerhausen from Institut Designlabor Gutenberg/ Hochschule Mainz and used for the decodeunicode and worldswritingsystems websites (links below), and its iconic poster together with the missing scripts (ANRT research program).

Title
Decode Blockdock
Date
2015–2023
Type
Type design
Client
Hochschule Mainz
Place
Mainz
Material
Custom typeface
Website
decodeunicode
Website
worldswritingsystems

Decode Blockdock, custom typeface, Hochschule Mainz, 2015-2023.

Visual identity and design of the Brave New World Order – Triennale Jeune Création website. The young art triennale is a major event for emerging artists from Luxembourg and the Greater Region. The website showcases 40 artists and a forum, initiated during the Covid pandemic which delayed the exhibition for one year. Each artist could login and update his profile. The starting page is randomly customized, displaying each time in another order the black and white identity drawings. The identity integrated the custom design of a typefaces in two styles.

Title
Triennale Jeune Création
Date
2020–2021
Type
Visual identity, Editorial design
Client
Rotondes, Casino Luxembourg
Place
Luxembourg City
Material
Website
Website
bravenewworldorder.lu
Co-design & development
Thomas Bouville

Brave New World Order – Triennale Jeune création, Rotondes, Casino Luxembourg – Forum d'art contemporain, 2020-2021, w/ Thomas Bouville.

Custom all-caps typeface in medium weight, used throughout the museum's documents and announcements. The nearby, recently restored Villa Majorelle uses the typeface as well for its signage. The typeface gathers different Art Nouveau forms found in architecture, furniture or art and transposes them into one harmonizing design. It is further is characterized by wide capitals in many variants. The six styles (Crocus, Dahlia, Gingko, Nenuphar, Rose, Thistle) are arranged from the most quiet to the most expressive letter­forms. Designed with Philippe Tytgat. Graphic design by Lab.Leblond.Tytgtat, Nancy. The typeface was later extended to minuscules in diverse weights, and published by Poem as a full retail type family in 2022.

Title
Nouveau
Date
2018–2020
Type
Type design
Client
Musée de l’Ecole de Nancy
Place
Nancy
Material
Custom typeface
Award
Type Directors Club 2023
Publication
Poem

Nouveau, custom typeface, Musée de l’Ecole de Nancy, w/ Philippe Tytgtat, Nancy, 2018-2020. Graphic design Lab.Leblond.Tytgtat.

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.

Title
Offenbach
Date
2025
Type
Type design
Client
Hochschule für Gestaltung Offenbach, Klingspor Museum, Poem
Place
Offenbach
Material
Free typeface
Workshop
Yile Cho, Quirin Fürbeck, Simon Gerstner, Paula Janser, Emerson Martus, Ekaterina Sacharova, Ngoc Anh Tran, Chiara Wißler, Edvinas Žukauskas (Marc Schütz, HfG Offenbach)
Licence
Creative Commons CC BY-ND 4.0

Offenbach, free typeface, 2025. Published by Poem and Klingspor Type Archive / HfG Offenbach.

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.

Title
Ratdolt's Index characterum
Date
2020
Type
Editorial design
Client
Poem
Place
Frankfurt am Main
Material
Pamphlet
Publication
Poem

Ratdolt's Index characterum, the earliest known type specimen, Riccardo Olocco, Poem, Frankfurt am Main, 2020.

Three lingual, 16 pages article about the genesis of the Instant typeface. Published in Typografische Monatsblätter / Revue Suisse de l'imprimerie / Swiss Typographic Magazine, N°6, 2012. Written by Jérôme Knebusch. Free PDF download on link below.

Title
Instant: from handwriting to type design
Date
2012
Type
Research, Editorial design
Client
Typografische Monatsblätter / Revue Suisse de l'imprimerie / Swiss Typographic Magazine
Place
Bern
Material
Essay
Download
Article

Instant: from handwriting to type design, Typografische Monatsblätter / Revue Suisse de l'imprimerie / Swiss Typographic Magazine, N°6, 2012.

Là où les détails se cachent, Sébastien Gouju, Institut Français Stuttgart, 2013.

Until the advent of talking pictures, cinema had been referred to as silent. To compensate for the absence of sound, films were punctuated by numerous ‘intertitles’ containing a fixed text, interspersed among the sequences of moving images. Intertitles could be hand-painted on thick paper or glass plates, using brushes or round-tipped nibs, by teams of letterers capable of producing up to 100 cards a day. Yet today we know almost nothing about these technically gifted craftsmen. However, at the end of the 1910s, in the United States, the name of a technician occasionally appeared in the film credits: that of Victor Vance, a letterer associated with the Warner Bros. studio. His distinctive style of lettering, constant over the years, was based on a virtuosic use of the brush. Considered a ‘title-artist’, he also wrote in 1930 an article on how to paint intertitles. This account sheds valuable and precise light on the methods used to produce intertitles and the way these objects were viewed at the time. Written by Julien Van Anholt and edited by Alice Savoie and Jérôme Knebusch in the Poem Pamphlet series.

Title
Victor Vance, title-artist
Date
2025
Type
Editorial design
Client
Poem
Place
Frankfurt am Main
Material
Pamphlet
Publisher
Poem

Victor Vance, title-artist, Julien Van Anholt, Poem, Frankfurt am Main, 2025.

From metal type to phototypesetting, from the typewriter to the Minitel, and from engraving to dry-transfer lettering, the typographical work of Ange Degheest (1928-2009) testifies of the numerous technical changes the printing and telecommunication sectors went through during the second half of the twentieth century. Ange Degheest’s story is remarkable and a perfect illustration of the technical odyssey that took place throughout the twentieth century. Yet it is astonishing and disturbing to realise that, in spite of the quality and diversity of her lettering and type design work, her name has been forgotten amongst the list of those who have shaped the history of typography to this day. Reviving Ange Degheest was collectively written in Benjamin Gomez's type design class at EESAB Rennes by Eugénie Bidaut, Oriane Charvieux, Anaïs Déal, Luna Delabre, Camille Depalle, Mandy Elbé, Justine Herbel and May Jolivet. Afterword 'Ange Degheest, a female ghost of France’s type history' by Alice Savoie. Edited by Alice Savoie and Jérôme Knebusch in the Poem Pamphlet series.

Title
Ange Degheest
Date
2022
Type
Editorial design
Client
Poem
Place
Frankfurt am Main
Material
Pamphlet
Publisher
Poem

Reviving Ange Degheest, type class EESAB Rennes, Poem, Frankfurt am Main, 2022.

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