Design Nomenclature / Type

Blackletter

Also called gothic, Fraktur, Textura, fracture

This entry has not been translated yet and is shown in English.

The dense broken-pen hands of northern Europe and the types cut from them — Textura, Rotunda, Schwabacher, Fraktur. Gutenberg's type was Textura; Fraktur remained normal for German text into the twentieth century. Extremely economical of space and, to readers untrained in it, extremely slow.

A four-cell grid labelled Textura, Rotunda, Schwabacher and Fraktur, each setting the letters m, i and n. None of the four hands is among the three faces this publication can rely on: each cell prints its substitution to Georgia, so all four are the same roman and no broken pen appears anywhere in the figure. A footnote says cells sharing a face show one design, not the class's.

In practice

Its Nazi associations are a misreading in both directions: the regime promoted Fraktur, then banned it in 1941. The letterforms carry the baggage regardless, and in practice that governs their use.

Not to be confused with

How this term connects

BicameralLegibilityScriptVox-ATypIBlackletter
Related Confused with