DIN (typeface)
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DIN, an acronym for the German Deutsches Institut für Normung (German Industrial Standard), and the name of an increasingly large realist sans-serif typeface family. In 1936 the German Standard Committee selected DIN 1451 as the standard typeface for use in the areas of engineering, technology, traffic, administration and business. Among the same committees adopted recommendations was an early precursor to the typographic grid.
The earliest version of a DIN face was released by the D Stempel AG foundry in 1923. Stempel's DIN face was based upon a 1905 typeface for the Königlich Preußische Eisenbahn-Verwaltung (Royal Prussian Railway Company) and was applied mostly to architectural and engineering drawings. This version later became the basis for DIN-Engschrift. In 1929, the Berthold foundry released a version, it too was mostly applied to drawings. Both of the early DIN typefaces were made available as stencils, cut from an acetate material, for labeling technical drawings. Both of the earliest DIN faces were used primarily in italic form.
Spread of the DIN typeface, after its 1936 adoption by the German Standards Committee was rapid. The mostly widely used of the DIN 1451 group was DIN-Mittelschrift. It was released as metal type, as acetate stencils for smaller applications, large metal stencil alphabets for application to vehicles and in train yards, and as cast metal lettering for street and building signage. Polish and Cyrillic variants of the face were developed in the 1940s.
Though the Bauhaus used a DIN inspired mark in catalogs and a periodical during the 1930s, popular use of DIN in print material did not occur until the 1960s. The transfer type company Letraset made several variants available, likely intended for architects and engineers, in the 1970s, but making it available to graphic designers as well. By the late 1980s use of DIN faces emerged in European and North American graphic work. In 1995, Dutch typeface designer Albert-Jan Pool drew a multi-weight version, eventually licensing it to Font Shop International as FF DIN. The FF DIN family, unlike DIN 1451, uses simplified standard weight names.
[edit] References
- Blackwell, Lewis. 20th Century Type. Yale University Press: 2004. ISBN 0-300-10073-6.
- Fiedl, Frederich, Nicholas Ott and Bernard Stein. Typography: An Encyclopedic Survey of Type Design and Techniques Through History. Black Dog & Leventhal: 1998. ISBN 1-57912-023-7.
- Jaspert, W. Pincus, W. Turner Berry and A.F. Johnson. The Encyclopædia of Type Faces. Blandford Press Lts.: 1953, 1983. ISBN 0-7137-1347-X.
- Macmillan, Neil. An A–Z of Type Designers. Yale University Press: 2006. ISBN 0-300-11151-7.
- DIN 1451-2: Schriften–Serifenlose Linear-Antiqua–Verkehrsschrift. Deutsches Institut für Normung, 1986-2002.
