It shouldn't be a surprise to anyone that these letter shapes are familiar. They have the unmistakable color and weight of Cooper Black, Oswald Cooper's most famous typeface from 1921. What should be a surprise is that these letters are actually from George Auriol's Robur Noir (or Robur Black), published in France circa 1909 by the Peignot foundry as a bolder, solid counterpart to its popular Auriol typeface (1901). This face precedes Cooper Black by a dozen of years and a whole Great War. Cooper Black has always been a bit of a strange typographical apparition to anyone who tried to explain its original purpose, instant popularity in the 1920s, and major revival in the late 1960s. BB&S and Oswald Cooper PR aside, it is quite evident that the majority of Cooper Black's forms did not evolve from Cooper Old Style, as its originators claimed. And the claim that it collected various Art Nouveau elements is of course too ambiguous to be questioned. But when compared with Robur Noir, the "elements" in question can hardly be debated. The chronology of this "machine age" ad face in metal is amusing and stands as somewhat of a general index of post-Great War global industrial competition: - 1901: Peignot releases Auriol, based on the handwriting of George Auriol (the "quintessential Art Nouveau designer," according to Steven Heller and Louise Fili), and it becomes very popular. - 1909-1912: Peignot releases the Robur family of faces. The eight styles released are Robur Noir and its italic, a condensed version called Robur Noir Allongée (Elongated) and its italic, an outline version called Clair De Lune and its condensed/elongated, a lined/striped version called Robur Tigre, and its condensed/elongated counterpart. - 1914 to 1918: World War One uses up economies on both sides of the Atlantic, claims Georges Peignot with a bullet to the forehead, and non-war industry stalls for 4 years. - 1921: BB&S releases Cooper Black with a lot of hype to hungry publishing, manufacturing and advertising industries. - 1924: Robert Middleton releases Ludlow Black. - 1924: The Stevens Shanks foundry, the British successor to the Figgins legacy, releases its own exact copies of Robur Noir and Robur Noir Allongée, alongside a lined version called Royal Lining. - 1925: Oswald Cooper releases his Cooper Black Condensed, with similar math to Robur Noir Allongée (20% reduction in width and vectical stroke). - 1925: Monotype releases Frederick Goudy's Goudy Heavy, an "answer to Cooper Black". Type historians gravely note it as the "teacher steals from his student" scandal. Goudy Heavy Condensed follows a few years later. - 1928: Linotype releases Chauncey Griffith's Pabst Extra Bold. The condensed counterpart is released in 1931. When type production technologies changed and it was time to retool the old faces for the Typositor age, Cooper Black was a frontrunning candidate, while Robur Noir was all but erased from history. This was mostly due to its commercial revival by flourishing and media-driven music and advertising industries. By the late 1960s variations and spinoffs of Cooper Black were in every typesetting catalog. In the early- to mid-1970s, VGC, wanting to capitalize on the Art Nouveau onslaught, published an uncredited exact copy of Robur Black under the name Skylark. But that also went with the dust of history and PR when digital tech came around, and Cooper Black was once again a prime retooling candidate. The "old fellows stole all of our best ideas" indeed. So almost a hundred years after its initial fizz, Robur is here in digital form, to reclaim its rightful position as the inspiration for, and the best alternative to, Cooper Black. Given that its forms date back to the turn of the century, a time when foundry output had a closer relationship to calligraphic and humanist craft, its shapes are truer to brush strokes and much more idiosyncratic than Cooper Black in their totality's construct. Robur and Robur Italic come in all popular font formats. Language support includes Western, Central and Eastern European character sets, as well as Baltic, Esperanto, Maltese, Turkish, and Celtic/Welsh languages. A range of complementary f-ligatures and a few alternates letters are included within the fonts.

With its extended complement, this comprehensive redesign of Bank Gothic by Elsner+Flake offers a wide spectrum for usage. After 80 years, the typeface Bank Gothic, designed by Morris Fuller Benton in 1930, is still as desirable for all areas of graphic design as it has ever been. Its usage spans the design of headlines to exterior design. Game manufacturers adopt this spry typeface, so reminiscent of the Bauhaus and its geometric forms, as often as do architects and web designers. The creative path of the Bank Gothic from hot metal type via phototypesetting to digital variations created by desktop designers has by now taken on great breadth. The number of cuts has increased. The original Roman weight has been augmented by Oblique and Italic variants. The original versions came with just a complement of Small Caps. Now, they are, however, enlarged by often quite individualized lower case letters. In order to do justice to the form changes and in order to differentiate between the various versions, the Bank Gothic, since 2007 a US trademark of the Grosse Pointe Group (Trademark FontHaus, USA), is nowadays available under a variety of different names. Some of these variations remain close to the original concept, others strive for greater individualism in their designs. The typeface family which was cut by the American typefoundry ATF (American Type Founders) in the early 1930’s consisted of a normal and a narrow type family, each one in the weights Light, Medium and Bold. In addition to its basic ornamental structure which has its origin in square or rectangular geometric forms, there is another unique feature of the Bank Gothic: the normally round upper case letters such as B, C, G, O, P, Q, R and U are also rectangular. The one exception is the upper case letter D, which remains round, most likely for legibility reasons (there is the danger of mistaking it for the letter O.) Because of the huge success of this type design, which follows the design principles of the more square and the more contemporary adaption of the already existing Copperplate, it was soon adopted by all of the major type and typesetting manufacturers. Thus, the Bank Gothic appeared at Linotype; as Commerce Gothic it was brought out by Ludlow; and as Deluxe Gothic on Intertype typesetters. Among others, it was also available from Monotype and sold under the name Stationer’s Gothic. In 1936, Linotype introduced 6pt and 12pt weights of the condensed version as Card Gothic. Lateron, Linotype came out with Bank Gothic Medium Condensed in larger sizes and a more narrow set width and named it Poster Gothic. With the advent of photoypesetters and CRT technologies, the Bank Gothic experienced an even wider acceptance. The first digital versions, designed according to present computing technologies, was created by Bitstream whose PostScript fonts in Regular and Medium weights have been available through FontShop since 1991. These were followed by digital redesigns by FontHaus, USA, and, in 1996, by Elsner+Flake who were also the first company to add cursive cuts. In 2009, they extended the family to 16 weights in both Roman and Oblique designs. In addition, they created the long-awaited Cyrillic complement. In 2010, Elsner+Flake completed the set with lowercase letters and small caps. Since its redesign the type family has been available from Elsner+Flake under the name Bank Sans®. The character set of the Bank Sans® Caps and the Bank Sans® covers almost all latin-based languages (Europe Plus) as well as the Cyrillic character set MAC OS Cyrillic and MS Windows 1251. Both families are available in Normal, Condensed and Compressed weights in 4 stroke widths each (Light, Regular, Medium and Bold). The basic stroke widths of the different weights have been kept even which allows the mixing of, for instance, normal upper case letters and the more narrow small caps. This gives the family an even wider and more interactive range of use. There are, furthermore, extensive sets of numerals which can be accessed via OpenType-Features. The Bank Sans® type family, as opposed to the Bank Sans® Caps family, contains, instead of the optically reduced upper case letters, newly designed lower case letters and the matching small caps. Bank Sans® fonts are available in the formats OpenType and TrueType.

Le Typorium présente une nouvelle famille de caractères calligraphiques basés sur une écriture étudiée à travers les manuscrits et autographes de Georges Brassens, poète et musicien (1921-1981). Son tracé, rigoureux et appliqué, souvent minutieux, est à l’image d’une œuvre unique et singulière, immédiatement reconnaissable. Le script Brassens offre des fonctionnalités OpenType telles que des caractères alternatifs pour les majuscules et les minuscules afin de renforcer la fluidité d’une écriture manuelle, des chiffres alternatifs, des fractions et un jeu de caractères accentués étendu pour prendre en charge de nombreuses langues étrangères. Trois graisses ont été créées afin d’offrir une large palette de possibilités graphiques. 60 images d’un poète qui a cassé sa pipe à l’âge de 60 ans., classées en trois séries de vignettes (pictogrammes, symboles, portraits), elles illustrent l’univers imagé et la richesse symbolique de la poésie de Georges Brassens où les représentations mythologiques et allégoriques y tiennent une part importante. Georges Brassens est un poète, auteur-compositeur-interprète né à Sète le 22 octobre 1921, mort à Saint-Gély-du-Fesc le 29 octobre 1981 et enterré au cimetière Le Py de Sète. Auteur de plus de deux cents chansons populaires, il met en musique et interprète ses poèmes en s’accompagnant à la guitare. Outre ses propres textes, il met également en musique des poèmes de François Villon, Victor Hugo, Paul Verlaine, Paul Fort, Antoine Pol, ou encore Louis Aragon. Il reçoit le Grand Prix de Poésie de l’Académie Française e 1967. Un grand nombre d’écoles, salles de spectacle, voies, parcs et jardins portent également son nom, dont à Paris le parc Georges-Brassens, tout proche de l’impasse Florimont où il vécut ses premières années parisiennes, de sa maison de la rue Santos-Dumont et du café Les Sportifs Réunis – Chez Walczak – rue Brancion qui lui inspira « Le Bistrot ». À Sète, l’Espace Georges Brassens ainsi que de nombreux festivals et associations redonnent vie au poète et à son œuvre. The Typorium presents a new calligraphic typeface family based on a writing studied through the manuscripts and autographs of Georges Brassens, poet and musician (1921-1981). Its layout, rigorous and applied, often meticulous, is in the image of a unique and singular work, immediately recognizable. Brassens script offers OpenType features such as alternate characters for upper and lower case to enhance the fluency of handwriting, alternate numbers, fractions and an extended accented character set to support many foreign languages. Three weights have been created to offer a wide range of graphic possibilities. 60 images of a poet who broke his pipe (French expression for passing away) at the age of 60, classified into three series of vignettes (pictograms, symbols, portraits), they illustrate the imagery world and the symbolic richness of Georges Brassens poetry where mythological and allegorical representations hold an important part. Georges Brassens is a poet, singer-songwriter born in Sète on October 22, 1921, died in Saint-Gély-du-Fesc on October 29, 1981 and buried in Le Py cemetery of Sète. Author of more than two hundred popular songs, he sets to music and performs his poems, accompanying himself on the guitar. In addition to his own texts, he also sets to music poems by François Villon, Victor Hugo, Paul Verlaine, Paul Fort, Antoine Pol, or Louis Aragon. He received the Grand Prix of Poetry from the Académie Française in 1967. A large number of schools, theaters, streets, parks and gardens also bear his name, including in Paris the Georges-Brassens park, very close to the impasse Florimont where he lived his first years in Paris, his house in the rue Santos-Dumont and the café Les Sportifs Réunis - Chez Walczak - rue Brancion which inspired "Le Bistrot". In Sète, the Espace Georges Brassens as well as numerous festivals and associations bring the poet and his work back to life.