City
City typeface was designed by Georg Trump and was released in 1930 by Foundry H. Berthold in Berlin, Germany. Though classified as a slab serif (also called mechanistic, square serif, or egyptian: it is a type of serif typeface characterized by thick, block like serifs. Usually blunt and angular or rounded. They generally have no bracket. Some consider slab serifs to be a subset of modern serif typefaces. Because of their bold appearance, they are most commonly used in large headline and advertisements but are seldom used in body text. The exception is those that are monospaced, because of their usage in typewriters, but they is declining as electronic publishing becomes more common. Another recent exception is the typeface designed for The Guardian newspaper in the United Kingdom which is an Egyptian used through the paper as body text. History of San Serif classification that leads to the City Typeface: as printed materials began to branch out from the familiar realms of books, new typefaces were needed for use in advertising, posters, and flyers. Slab Serif printing type was first commercially introduced by Vincent Figgins under the name Antique, with copies of specimen dates 1815-1817. Following Napoleon's Egyptian campaign and dissemination of images and descriptions via publications like Description de l'Égypte (1809) an intense cultural fascination with all things Egyptian followed. Suites of contemporary parlor furniture were produced resembling furniture found in tombs. Multicolored woodblock printed wallpaper could make a dining room in Edinburgh or Chicago feel like Luxor. While there was no relationship between Egyptian writing systems and slab serif types, either shrewd marketing or honest confusion led to slab serifs often being called Egyptians, and many early ones are named for the subject: Cairo, Karnak, and Memphis. The common metonym "Egyptian" is derived from a craze for Egyptian artifacts in Europe and North America in the early nineteenth century, which led type founders producing Slab Serifs after Figgins' work to call their designs Egyptian. However, the term Egyptian had previously been used to describe sans-serif types in England, so the term 'Antique' was used by British and American typefounders. The term Egyptian was adopted by French and German foundries, where it became Egyptienne.), City displays a strong modernist (term that describes both a set of cultural tendencies and an array of associated cultural movements, originally arising from wide scale and far reaching changes to Western society in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries) influence in it's geometric structure of right angles and opposing round corners. The type face takes inspiration from the machine age, and industry. A consistent application of repeated parts: an outer circle softening interior rectilinear spaces, results in a highly unified and refined type face. The lowercase a is composed of a two horizontal rectangles in the interior, the outer skin follows the counter but always contrasting the outer stroke with the organic curves. The face was produced in three weights: light, medium, and bold, each in roman and italic. The graphic designer Jan Tschichold helped to popularize the City type face by his use of it for his book Typographische Gestaltung published the Basel publishing house Benno Schwabe & Co. IBM corporation used variations of City for their corporate logo from 1956 on word and used City medium on the title pages and covers of their technical manuals for several decades. Southern Television used City for titling in their news program Day by Day. In 1998 Anime Series Cowboy Bebop used City for the titles. A variant of this typeface was also used for the titles and credits of the CBS crime drama series, Mannix. In 2007-2009 Berthold released Open Type Pro version of City called City Pro, which supports Central European , Latin Extended A characters. Open Type features include ordinals, proportional lining figures, subscripts, and subscripts, fractions. The SquareSlab711 font from Bit Stream is very similar to City. It is available in light, medium, and bold weights.
In the world outside of the life of City, The 1930's was a time of the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl. The Empire State building was constructed. A variety of different events were happening in the 1930s. But Not many were directed towards the introduction of new type faces. I believe type faces were used in different propaganda pieces and advertisement towards the public but was not specifically targeted as a substantial event in history.
Georg Trump was born on July 10, 1896 in Brettheim, Germany and passed on December 21, 1985 in Munich. He was a known graphic designer, typographer, type designer, painter, and teacher. Trump began his study in 1912 to study at the Art School of Stuttgart. In 1919 put together a team with Imre Reiner and Walter Brudi with Professor FH Ernst Schneidler. He also worked with ceramics in Southern Italy and Sardinia. He filled a variety of different jobs as a teacher, ceramic artist, professor and worked with H Brthold AG type foundry in Berlin, as well as C.E. Weber type foundry in Stuttgart. Berthold is a name long associated with type design. H. Berthold AG was one of the largest and most successful type foundries in the world for most of the modern typographic era. (It was established in 1858 by Hermann Berthold and based in Berlin, the company played a key role in the introduction of major new typefaces and successful player in the development of type setting machines. The H Berthold foundry most celebrated family type faces is arguably Akzidenz-Grotesk which was released in 1896. It was an early sans-serif which prefigured by half a century the release of enormously popular new-grotesque faces such as Helvetica. in 1950, type designer Gunter Gerhard Lange embarked upon a long affiliation with the company , for which he designed various original typefaces, including Concorde and Imago, and oversaw the foundry's revivals of classic faces such as Garamond, Caslon, Baskerville, and Bodini. Beset by financial troubles, H Berthold AG ceased operations in 1993. Berthold Type Ltd, a Chicago based company, was one of the companies which claimed to be copyright owner of Berthold fonts, took over distribution of the Berthold digital type library and has released several new typefaces under the direction of Lange, who retired in 1990, but now serves as artistic consultant to the new Berthold) In 1934 he left Berlin because of his forced removal from the Nazis. From 1939-1945 Trump again had to enter the military, where he was wounded. Trump was a professor at the School of Applied Arts Bielefeld and in 1929 at the Master School for Book Printers in Germany with Paul Renner and Jan Tschichold (teaching type design and typography). In 1919 to 1934 he served as Director of the Higher School Graphic Berlin. He also help a position as a director and was awarded a medal by the Type Directors Club of New York. After 1945 there was the Reconstruction of the Munich School. From 1953 Trump was a retired Freelance Artist. During this time Trump had increasing international recognition, especially in the United States where he Performed in New York Exhibits. He has been exhibited in New York, Munich, and Offenbach. In addition to his written work was an extensive graphic work of posters , book covers, and vignettes about logos and graphic art to stamps. George Trump has had several exhibitions at the 303 Gallery in New York in 1966, Munich City Museum in 1981, and the Kingspor Museum in Offenbach in 1983. He is a designer of 12 type faces : Amati Pro, City BQ, City BQ Light, Codex, Delphin I, Delphin I Alternate, Delphin No 2, Forum I-AR, Gravur-AR, Jaguar, Kuenstler 480, Mauritius, Schadow, Square Slabserif 711, Tiger Script, Time Script, Time Script Bold, Time Script Light, Time Script Medium, Trump Gothic West, Trump Mediaeval, Trump Script.
