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odd question mark
Posted by Stephen Rapp in
5 Oct 2009 — 6:52am
5 Oct 2009 — 6:52am
Somebody just brought this up at work. A job they had set in Stempel Schneidler was sent back for fixing because of the question mark. I had a look and was a bit surprised to see this. At first I thought maybe they had accidentally typed a Spanish one, but the dot is on the bottom. I find the design of it kind of extreme for an otherwise very legible face.
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5 Oct 2009 — 7:17am
Oh, well, for my eyes it is quite okay. I learned in school in Austria to write the question mark as a reversed S with a dot at the bottom …
Compare it to the Schulschrift. So it makes sense to me (although it still looks quirky in Stempel Schneidler).
5 Oct 2009 — 7:40am
The qm really looks like that. Maybe Schneidler just visited the Oktober Fest when he drew that?
. . .
Bert Vanderveen BNO
5 Oct 2009 — 7:42am
If I saw that on a page I would probably wonder how a designer managed to get an odd Arabic character in the middle of a text block. I can see there being situations where one could get away with using this question mark, but if it’s in running text it needs to be changed.
5 Oct 2009 — 10:35am
German typeface by a German type designer originally made for a German market by a German foundry. Now sentenced to globally homogenised blandness?
If your clients don't like the Schneidler ?, use a different typeface.
20 May 2011 — 12:19pm
I think the client can like everything but the "?", and have that changed.
Trying to make Spanish-speakers less annoyed isn't "bland", it's good design.
hhp
20 May 2011 — 1:28pm
Personally, I find the design brilliant, in a self-reinforcing way (as in Huh?)...
20 May 2011 — 3:28pm
The typeface was designed by Chuck Norris, the question mark added later.
22 May 2011 — 6:50am
Nah. He just gave it a roundkick into the wall. It wound up looking like this after it fell off.
23 May 2011 — 11:52am
So, if you are proposing this was designed for odd questions, and that normal questions would use a normal question mark of some kind, I think that's brilliant!
24 May 2011 — 4:08pm
Having a different question mark as an alternate, so the typeface can serve users in other countries, would not be a bad thing, but, yes, a German typeface designed for a German market is allowed to have a question mark that is accepted there if not elsewhere.
24 May 2011 — 4:28pm
Is it accepted there, today?
hhp
25 May 2011 — 1:22am
See Rainer’s answer (first comment). To my eyes, it sure is a non-standard design, but definitely acceptable. Having said that, I haven’t seen a lot of Schneidler recently. The typeface also is not mentioned as one of the commonly used ones for book design, in the 2005 sample compiled by the Museum der Arbeit. This analysis looked at 1207 books printed by Clausen & Bosse, for various publishers. Assuming it is somewhat representative, even Trump, Goudy and Berling are more ‘accepted’ than Schneidler.
25 May 2011 — 6:06am
Good news - I'm a big fan of non-standardism. Although of course one still has to appreciate the difference between local and global.
hhp
26 May 2011 — 9:40am
How hard is it to turn the damned thing upside down?
26 May 2011 — 10:11am
BTW, what does the Spanish opening question mark look like?
hhp
26 May 2011 — 12:07pm
Roughly, a regular ques, but rotated 180 degrees - "¿"
26 May 2011 — 12:14pm
Of course I meant in Schneidler.
I just checked: it's also Teutonic.
hhp
26 May 2011 — 12:15pm
Steve: How hard is it to turn the damned thing upside down?
Hrant: what does the Spanish opening question mark look like?