Offenbach sets new standards: City gets its own font
27.05.2026 – The city of Offenbach is modernizing its image - and in doing so is building on a proud tradition. At the heart of the new image is a unique font, which typeface artist Marc Schütz developed with great dedication from a historical Offenbach font by Rudolf Koch.
Lord Mayor Dr. Felix Schwenke emphasizes: "Offenbach has strengths that not everyone sees at first glance. A modern, unmistakable image helps us to make these strengths visible - reliably, professionally and with a signature that is truly our own. We have used the knowledge of external and internal experts and created a result that suits Offenbach. The new 'OF Soul' typeface builds on a tradition in our city that stretches back over 100 years and combines modernity and tradition."
For years, citizens have been able to recognize the city administration as the sender of flyers, brochures and posters by the blue bar on the left-hand edge with the logo at the bottom left. The city wants to continue to use this recognition effect in an adapted form, strengthen it with its own font - and at the same time achieve a more modern public image.
A font for a city
"OF Soul" is the name of the new font for the city of Offenbach - based on the successfully launched image and location campaign "Soul OF Hessen". It was developed by typeface artist Marc Schütz, former lecturer at the Hochschule für Gestaltung, creative director of the SchultzSchultz design office and a proven expert in typography, on behalf of the Public Relations Office.
In 1927, the typeface artist Rudolf Koch designed a geometric grotesque font made up of clear shapes at the Offenbach type foundry Klingspor Bros: Circles, squares, triangles. It was given the simple name "Kabel" and is still used worldwide today. Koch's work is preserved in Offenbach: in the Klingspor Museum, named after Karl Klingspor, whose collection of modern book and type art forms the basis for the museum.
Schütz had already reinterpreted the cables in 2016. He studied the earliest font samples in the Klingspor Museum and used them to develop the "Neue Kabel" font family with 18 weights and 1,100 characters - modern enough for digital applications, close enough to the original. On this basis, "OF Soul" has now been created once again, tailor-made for the city of Offenbach. The letters are reminiscent of Koch's calligraphic pen stroke; special variants of the vowels combine past and present - as the designer intended. Two well-known cities inspired the idea of a custom typeface: Berlin and Vienna also use distinctive house fonts that stand for their city without further explanation.
The logo of the city of Offenbach was also provided with the new font; it remains otherwise the same in form and color, but was extended on this occasion by the previously missing addition "city".
Cyan: The color as sender identification
Even beyond the logo, the city retains the strong corporate color cyan with the contrasting color white: The strong blue-green is derived from the background color of Offenbach's city coat of arms. Six other accent colors complete the palette, each with a lighter shade.
In future, information for citizens will be recognizable by a slanted cyan area on which the city logo sits. Titles can be highlighted using blue bars. A design line for positive messages with a frame in cyan and the motto "Soul OF Hessen" links the new design with the existing image and location campaign developed by Offenbach's city marketing department in collaboration with the city's business development department.
Recognizability
Behind the new design is the claim: Where the city of Offenbach is written on it, the city of Offenbach is also in it. And vice versa: where the city of Offenbach is active, this should also be recognizable. At a time when hundreds of pieces of information reach people every day, the uniform design lends weight to official communications. It signals that this information comes from a reputable, reliable source.
The city administration consists of numerous decentralized organizational units. In the past, the sender was not always immediately recognizable for all products - also due to the large number of fonts used. With good templates, clear format specifications and defined quality standards as well as advice from the Public Relations Office, it should be made easy for all departments to help ensure that the city administration is quickly recognized as the sender.
Typical Offenbach
What makes the new design special is how it got there. The Public Relations Office initially asked several agencies to evaluate the existing design from 2014 and submit suggestions for improvement.
The agencies' criticism was clear: the previous font package was considered too inconsistent and the color scheme not concise enough. The Office of Public Relations developed the further process from these professional assessments. It developed a new color catalog based on recommendations and role models and implemented the idea of its own corporate typeface.
The costs were covered by the current public relations budget without any additional funding. Normally, up to 300,000 euros are budgeted for a complete corporate design. Offenbach, on the other hand, spent barely more than a tenth of this sum, including for the provision of its own corporate typeface. The new manual is only available in digital form and was largely created with the company's own staff and existing resources. It can be quickly adapted and expanded for any changes that may be necessary in the future.
"Cost awareness was at the heart of all our considerations for a contemporary image for the city. Thanks to suitable templates, offices and authorities can also continue to produce many things in-house at low cost - without having to resort to expensive external graphics service providers and agencies every time," explains Fabian El Cheikh, Head of the Public Relations Office.
The new design will be used on the website and in the social networks with immediate effect. The first productions and presentations have also already been implemented. It will be gradually introduced for all other communication materials such as flyers, information letters and posters - existing stocks will be used up first in order to save costs.