Anyone who deals with type design cannot avoid the name Klingspor: in the first half of the 20th century, the type foundry in Offenbach am Main produced typefaces designed by artists for lead typesetting and thus not only established the city's global reputation as the home of typography: in 1953, the Klingspor Museum was founded from Karl Klingspor's private collection and the foundry's type samples were incorporated into the museum collection. The fact that the story of typography and typefaces is far from over is demonstrated by the numerous typefaces that have since been reissued, reinterpreted and digitized.
The typeface archive of the Klingspor Museum in Offenbach is now also going online. The archive contains analog material, some of which is over 100 years old and has not yet been fully inventoried: preliminary sketches and correspondence that bear witness to the creation of typefaces that are still known today, as well as artistically designed type samples that advertised the finished products. These treasures are now available to everyone free of charge in the Klingspor Type Archive, the museum's new database. In addition, you can discover the further development of selected contemporary design and research projects that began in the archive.
At the heart of the website, initiated and designed by the two HfG graduates Laura Brunner and Leonie Martin (both from the design studio turbo type), is the visual access to the archive: large, cropped images of the objects can be moved across the screen as if on a digital light table and the search function with its sliders and buttons invites visitors to take an appealing exploration tour.
It took two years to develop and program, and the Klingspor Type Archive has now been launched with around 2,500 objects for the time being and will be successively expanded - so a virtual visit is always worthwhile.