Tuesday, February 11, 2014

Font of the Week #3: Alpengeist

Greetings to all! I hope this week finds you well and happy. It’s time for the Font of the Week again…

Alpengeist

   Alpengeist is a display face from Jukebox, loosely based on the European blackletter designs of eras past. The actual inspiration for the font came from the hand-lettered sign for the Matterhorn Bobsleds ride at Disneyland.

   Starting with only the letters that appear in the word “Matterhorn”, I adapted the design into a full typeface. By and large Alpengeist is a display font, meant to convey the fairy tale-like and idealized vision of Alpine culture, rather than be a strictly true blackletter face. Surprisingly enough, fonts like this (and even more elaborate) were once actually used to set text in German newspapers.

   The name ‘Alpengeist’ is a German word that literally translates as “spirit of the Alps”. However, the word can also refer to the mythical fur covered monster that supposedly lives in the Alps…very similar to the abominable snow monster or an Alpine Bigfoot. There is also a roller-coaster called Alpengeist at Busch Gardens.

   This font was designed in late 2001 and was part of the original Jukebox library that launched in 2003. Interestingly, the font ended up coming full circle and was later used by Disney for the Matterhorn Bobsled pin, when pin trading became all the rage a few years back.


Alpengeist is perfect for any design that needs that old world Swiss/Bavarian feel to it. Now available in OpenType from Jukebox Fonts website



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