Wasenbacher
Blackletter is a deeply rooted part of European writing culture but lost its importance during the 19th century. Only in the German-speaking world did blackletter remain popular until well into the 20th century. Georg Salden, like all schoolchildren in German-speaking countries, learned to read and write blackletter. However, for people today, the old gothic script is unfamiliar and often barely legible. Wasenbacher retains the broken character of this script while being easily legible for modern readers.
Blackletter’s lowercase letter ‘s’ has two different forms depending on its context. The long ‘s’ appears at the beginning of a syllable, the round ‘s’ at the end of a syllable. For German words Wasenbacher Expert chooses the right form of ‘s’ automatically by utilising very sophisticated OpenType-Features.
Fraktur (above) and Wasenbacher (below) in comparison. Individual characters such as the k, x or y are barely decipherable for people who are only familiar with the Latin alphabet. Wasenbacher retains the character of blackletter, yet is as easy to read as a typeface with Latin letters.
The difference is particularly visible with the capital letters. Fraktur characters (above) are unfamiliar and difficult to read. However, the letters of Wasenbach (below) are much more similar to our Latin letters.
