Jakob Erbar (8 February 1878 – 7 January 1935) was a German professor of graphic design and a type designer. Erbar trained as a typesetter for the Dumont-Schauberg Printing Works before studying under Fritz Helmut Ehmcke and Anna Simons. Erbar went on to teach in 1908 at the Städtischen Berufsschule and from 1919 to his death at the Kölner Werkschule. His seminal Erbar series was one of the first geometric sans-serif typefaces, predating both Paul Renner'sFutura and Rudolf Koch's Kabel by some five years.
Typefaces
Exemplar of some of the fonts designed by Jakob Erbar.
Foundry types produced by Jakob Erbar:
Feder Grotesk (1910, Ludwig & Mayer Typefoundry) - a "stressed" sans-serif, with some strokes very visibly thicker than others, suggesting Art-Nouveau style lettering or writing with a broad-nibbed pen. Feder means "feather" or "quill pen" in German
Friedl, Friedrich; Ott, Nicolaus; Stein, Bernard (1998). Typography: an encyclopedic survey of type design and techniques throughout history. New York: Black Dog & Leventhal: Distributed by Workman Publishing Co. ISBN978-1-57912-023-8.
Jaspert, W. Pincus; Berry, W. Turner; Johnson, A. F. (1983). The encyclopaedia of type faces (4th ed., entirely restyled & greatly enled.). Poole, Dorset: New York, N.Y: Blandford Press; Distributed in the U.S. by Sterling. ISBN978-0-7137-1347-3.
↑Macmillan, Niel.An A-Z of Type Designers. Yale University Press, 2006 (pg. 78)
↑Jaspert, W. Pincus, W. Turner Berry and A.F. Johnson. The Encyclopedia of Type Faces. Blandford Press Lts.: 1953, 1983, ISBN0-7137-1347-X, p. 2408-249
