Unlike many sans serif typefaces published during the last 60+ years, Akzidenz-Grotesk is not a harmonious family. It was not designed all at once. Indeed, it originated as several different typefaces. Those sub-families from the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries were not attributed to any known designers. For a long time, it was presented as the work of anonymous craftsmen employed at the H. Berthold AG type foundry in Berlin and the other type foundries Berthold acquired. These days, graphic designers expect that every typeface should be able to be traced back to a single source – a creative person from history, who worked in a similar way as they do themselves. The real history of almost every early sans serif is quite messy, but that lack of clarity gets in the way of myth making: everybody wants a good story. Since no concise back story existed for Akzidenz-Grotesk, an inaccurate one was created twenty years ago, attributing it to a Berlin punchcutter and type foundry owner named Ferdinand Theinhardt. The story has been repeated ever since. This presentation will reframe the history of Akzidenz-Grotesk’s origins in light of research from the last twenty years, including the lecturer’s own investigation.

Born 1979 in Baltimore/USA, Dan Reynolds lives in Berlin. From 1997 to 2001, he studied graphic design at the Rhode Island School of Design. Then he moved to Germany, briefly attending design schools in Wiesbaden and Offenbach before starting to work at the old Linotype GmbH company. He was there from 2004 to 2007, and again from 2008 to 2011. In between, he completed the MA Typeface Design course at the University of Reading in England. In 2009, Dan began teaching type design classes as an adjunct instructor at various programs in Germany, including the Berlin University of the Arts, the Berlin Weissensee School of Art, the HTW Berlin, the Hochschule Darmstadt, the Kunsthochschule Burg Giebichenstein in Halle, and the HBKsaar in Saarbrücken. Between 2011 and 2016, Dan was a research assistance at the Braunschweig University of Art, and earlier this year, he submitted his doctoral dissertation there. This was on the relationships between late-nineteenth/early-twentieth century German type foundries and freelance designers. Since May 2018, Dan has worked at LucasFonts GmbH.

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