Rotis (font)
Rotis is a font family that was published by Otl Aicher in 1988 . The font takes its name from Aicher's place of residence Rotis, a district of Leutkirch in the Allgäu .
variants
The font family of Rotis consists of four families:
- Rotis antiqua (or serif , with fully designed serifs )
- Rotis semi -antiqua (or semi-serif , with implied serifs)
- Rotis semi- grotesque (or semi-sans , without serifs, with clear line width contrast )
- Rotis grotesk (or sans , without serifs)
In 2011 the Rotis II Sans was designed by Alice Savoie and Robin Nicholas , a variant of the Rotis grotesque in seven (instead of the previous four) weights, each with italics. The spacing of the letters has been modified and the height of the digits has been adapted to the capital letters.
In the design
Aicher himself generally wrote the name Rotis in lower case and only later added capitals to his design, as he rejected the capitalization of individual words as a symbol for hierarchy and oppression. In the font trade you can find mixed and often also one capitalized spelling.
The Rotis is very controversial among typographers and designers , as Otl Aicher ignored many of the recognized theses that he himself made about the legibility of fonts in general in his Rotis. With larger amounts of text, the typeface appears restless and flickers on light-colored paper, especially the two semicuts.
Nevertheless, the Rotis has distinctly shaped individual letters (especially the e ) and is therefore particularly suitable for headings and in logo typography . But it is also used as bread script , mostly in the cultural and artistic field.
Otl Aicher has completely set his book typography in the Rotis; the German text columns in consistently lower case , the English columns in mixed spelling.
Trivia
According to the Free State of Saxony's style guide, Rotis is the only font besides Arial that may be used in official publications. As Rotis is only available on some service computers due to a limited number of paid licenses, Arial is usually used.
literature
- Ralph Burkhardt, Christian Hartig: Rotis - a polemic. or: Success in 17 cuts . Verlag Hermann Schmidt, Mainz 2006, ISBN 3874397173
Web links
- Rotis at Identifont
- List of weights in the Agfa Rotis font family (Fonts.com)
- List of weights in the Rotis font family (Linotype.com)
- An examination of the Rotis font (stereotyp-e.de)
- Rotis II Sans (Linotype.com)
Individual evidence
- ↑ blog by Erik Spiekermann , in which he's assessment of Robin Kinross agrees and Rotis called a "mind game".
- ↑ Communication and public relations department: Typography - sachsen.de. Retrieved November 25, 2019 .