Peak typography: LudwigType brings three thrilling faces to Type Network

Inspired by the mountains of Italy, the streets of Finland, and the trailblazing era of American grotesques, Ludwig Übele delivers a tantalizing trio of types from Berlin.

By Type Network Staff

With a gift for grasping the big picture while remaining laser-focused, Ludwig Übele crafts type inspired by history, the environment, experimentation, and technology. His designs combine function, form, and fun, with each bearing a clear idea carried by attention to detail. In a followup to his foundry launch on Type Network last May, Übele brings us three more versatile families to love. Aspen displays hints of early American and European grotesques, but its classic proportions, long ascenders and descenders, and more organic forms—especially in the playful italic—stray from that traditional sans model, aiding legibility and lending vitality to text settings. With nine weights ranging from Thin to Black, with companion italics, Aspen is a breath of fresh air in the contemporary sans genre.

image description — Ludwig Übele’s typefaces are eminently useful but brimming with vitality. Warmth in some of the lowercase forms of a technical sans (the ‘a’ in Helsinki), delightful pseudo-stencil alternates (Brenta’s ‘f’, ‘a’, and ’s’), and energetic terminals (the ‘w’ in Aspen) lend these LudwigType families personality while maintaining readability and utility.

Brenta is a study in contrasts—its strong shoulders and bold serifs gracefully trail to fine junctions, deftly adding airy elegance to a firm foundation. Alternate pseudo-stencil forms feature gleefully disconnected ball terminals especially suited to distinctive display typography. Brenta boasts eight weights from Thin to Black, all with matching italics and small-cap styles. Inspired by the typeface used in Finnish traffic signs, Helsinki is solid but fairly narrow, lending economy of space to headlines and short text settings. Its forms are technical and geometric, but carry distinctive design details that set the face apart from other sans in the category. As Helsinki moves to the heavier end of its range, strokes gain weight more in the inside of the character than on the outside. This is trademark Übele, who likes that Helsinki appears almost like a monowidth typeface, which dovetails neatly with the industrial nature of the family. Helsinki comes in fourteen styles, in weights from Thin to Black with italics. All LudwigType fonts are available for print, web, applications, and ePub licensing. Webfonts may be tested free for thirty days; desktop trials are available upon request. To stay current on all things LudwigType, subscribe to Type Network News, our occasional email newsletter featuring font releases, foundry happenings, type and design events, and more.