1.768 birthday letters

In the Typography class at the Department of Design of the Hochschule Niederrhein, 68 typefaces were created on the anniversary of 100 years of Bauhaus! The students of the first semester intensively studied the basics of the Bauhaus and in the next step brought together the two subjects of Bauhaus and type design in an experimental way. For this purpose, one of the following six Bauhaus personalities was randomly assigned to them: Gunta Stölzl, Marianne Brandt, Anni Albers, László Moholy-Nagy, Marcel Breuer and Lyonel Feininger.

Orientated towards the style used by these Bauhaus-members, the students each developed an experimental typeface. Aim of the project was to design all 26 characters of the alphabet from A to Z. These should follow a conceptual idea and show a serial character. The result was a total of 68 × 26, i.e. “1.768 birthday letters.”

At the beginning of the 2019 summer semester, 23 out of 68 typefaces were selected. In the class Typography 2 students in small teams built the full character sets by adding numbers and other selected characters. Eventually, the typefaces were digitized using Glyphs and shown in use with different media. 

As a reminiscence of the Bauhaus and the personalities teaching there, the students decided to make these special fonts available for all who are interested—for free use. The font package “dkr-bh100” contains all 23 fonts of the project 1.768 birthday letters and can be downloaded here.

Tutors:
Prof. Nora Gummert-Hauser, Dipl.-Des. Guido Schneider und Dipl.-Des. Jens Könen.

Students:
Anni Albers: Mostafa Ashraf Mostafa, Kai Banasch, Stina Bick Fuertes, Lara Deissmann, Helin Erceylan, André Johanns, Jerome Kamp, Johanna Köstlin, Arabella Kuhn, Tra Mi Nguyen, Angelika Schittek, Nikolaos Theodoropoulos, Laura von Rebenstock, Kathrin Wenger and Jil Zander.

Marianne Brandt: Anne Clemens, Karoline Delger, Malina Hülsmann, Silvio Jedynak, Jan Kersten, Sofie Kienzle, Vanessa Pietzka, Maxim Schleicher, Helena von der Forst and Alex Zemelka.

Gunta Stölzl: Jessica Bayerlein, Melina Haase, Michaela Hommen, Hanna Marie Kaddik, Nele Konstanty, Kathrin Pastwa, Tanja Paulsen and Jacqueline Schneider.

László Moholy-Nagy: Maamon Alramadan, Linus Bock, Uljana Butusow, Joshua Ebel, Stephan Fabry, Viktor Gertken, Ann Christine Gierkes, Samuel Heinbach, Anita Krenn, Nils Knell, Christopher Linnemann, Atussah Lutze, Cherin Mohr, Ellen Müller, Annika Strehlau, Jana Tillmanns, Lena Ullrich and Laura Wilmsen.

Marcel Breuer: Antonia Diehlmann, Lisa Eppers, Alexander Fröhlich, Luisa Jansen, Lisa Kanyukova, Rabea Marquardt and Mitsuru Toki.

Lyonel Feininger: Nicole Bosquet, Linh Hoang, Birk Hoffmann, Yllka Hulaj, Lisa Kaysers, Annika Klumpen, Nadia Natale, Hans Seeger, Jessica Willner and Saif Zainalabdeen.