Analysis of Akzidenz Grotesk

Akzidenz Grotesk is a grotesque sans-serif typeface designed by Günter Gerhard Lange in 1896 for the Berthold Type Foundry. It’s widely regarded as one of the original san-serif types, and still remains a popular choice for many designers. Personally it’s one of my favourite fonts, I prefer it to Helvetica, which incidentally enough is believed to be inspired by Akzidenz. For me, it achieves a similar effect to many other san-serif grotesque types by accomplishing total neutrality. This is the basis of minimalist typography, because it strips the connotations carried with a typeface down massively. For example, when one looks at ‘Impact’, the connotations associated with it are headlines, newspapers etc. because that’s where it’s been contextualised to us. When we look at a grotesque sans-serif typeface I believe you look past the connotations, and start to focus much more heavily on the denotations, what the thing itself physically is and represents.

In Akzidenz’ case it is a clean-cut modernist grotesque sans-serif typeface, we know this because of it’s uniformly weighted non-serifed strokes, this is clear to see once compared to a humanist sans-serif (for example verdana or Tahoma) which do incorporate more ‘human like’ strokes that vary their line weight. Another piece of anatomy that declares Akzidenz as a grotesque, and not neo-grotesque is the end of the curved terminals, they are angled and by no means parallel to the baseline which is often the case for many neo-grotesque typefaces like Helvetica.