Adobe
The Lost Typography of Bauhaus
Five unfinished Bauhaus typefaces, completed a century later and given away free on Adobe TypeKit.
Challenge
Adobe wanted to inspire its community around typography and grow subscriptions to its font service, TypeKit. This was the second chapter of Hidden Treasures of Creativity, which meant finding a piece of design history that designers could put to work, not only read about. The work had to serve both goals at once.
Solution
We worked with the Bauhaus Dessau Foundation to finish five typefaces that Bauhaus students and teachers had started roughly a century ago, and abandoned when the school closed in 1932. Each typeface was completed and digitized from the unfinished originals, then set in specimen layouts that show the letterforms at work.
Results
All five completed typefaces were released free to every TypeKit user, which put a living piece of design history into working designers' hands. The typefaces started at Bauhaus a century ago and were never finished until now, so the release is both a gift to the TypeKit community and a completion of the school's own unfinished work.
