(x) Looking for Olivetti lettera 35 Schreibmaschinen-schriften {James Langdon}

terrys5844
5.Aug.2008 3.33am
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I’m looking to track down the typewriter font used by Derek Birdsell in his book ’notes on book design’.
He refers to it as ’Olivetti lettera 35 Schreibmaschinen-schriften’ within the text, but I can’t seem to find it, or anything similar.

I’ve attached some pics from the web, but they’re not great so apologies for that.
Any help will be much appreciated!

T

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MiseEnAbime
5.Aug.2008 4.05am
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Images are too small. You can take a look at lekton an olivetti typewriter inspired ‘open source’ font


jameslangdon
5.Aug.2008 4.34am
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I don’t know if this is what you’re looking for as I can’t see the type in the images, but from the name it might be:

http://www.myfonts.com/search?search%5Btext%5D=schreibmaschineregular


terrys5844
5.Aug.2008 5.45am
terrys5844's picture

Thanks guys, it’s much appreciated.
The Lekton face is very interesting, certainly going to keep that in mind for future projects.
Schreibmaschine Regular is the exact font I was looking for, thanks James you’re a star.

T


Jens Kutilek
5.Aug.2008 12.11pm
Jens Kutilek's picture

This is just great. Somebody posts pictures where you can’t make out a damn thing, then somebody else identifies the exact font by name.

Just a few things to consider:

  • “Schreibmaschinen-Schriften” is just German for “typewriter faces”, thus hardly a distinguishing name.
  • Contrary to popular belief, most typewriter faces weren’t specific to certain typewriter models. You could have different fonts on one model, just like today on your computer, only the changing of the font was a bit more difficult (it would have included soldering, so you chose one font when purchasing the machine and then were basically stuck with it). As far as I know though, Olivetti did have some exclusive typefaces on some of their machines.
  • The Linotype “Schreibmaschine Regular” cannot possibly be the face in question, because Linotype produced composing machines, not typewriters. At best they would have some makebelieve typewriter faces on their machines to mimick a hand-typed letter.
  • Linotype’s “Schreibmaschine Regular” probably came to their Library via Berthold’s “Schreibmaschinenschrift BQ” which looks identical. Berthold also didn’t produce typewriters, so go figure if it’s a real typewriter face ...

Why do I bother at all? When it comes to typewriter faces, I just can’t help it ... now does anybody have a recognizable picture of the typeface in question ... you really got me interested ;)

Cheers
Jens


Bald Condensed
5.Aug.2008 12.41pm
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Terry, excuse me for asking this but you really got me intrigued. How on earth did you expect anyone to identify this typeface from those pictures? I mean, there is no way you can make out even a single character.