CarlMarx Handwriting is a soft sans serif typeface based on lettering by Carl Marx (1911–1991), designed in 1932 during his first semester at the Bauhaus in Joost Schmidt’s class. Although the letter proportions are based on Schmidt’s teachings, the forms are not constructed from a compass and ruler, but drawn with brush and marker, lending the words a warm and lively touch.

Hidetaka Yamasaki redrew the letters from scratch and added all missing characters for today’s digital typographic needs. A set of hanging figures alternates for some critical letterforms (such as f, r, and t), and several ligatures make CarlMarx especially suitable for use in body text. As suggested by Marx, Yamasaki captured two weights from the original drawing and perfectly adjusted light and bold to highlight words and create hierarchy in headlines–without losing or adding space. True to the original, for this Handwriting family Yamasaki captured the wobbly contour in CarlMarx, preserving warmth in the condensed geometric style of the early 1930s.