Fleisch is a blackletter pair inspired by lettering that the designer, Joachim Müller-Lancé recalls from his childhood growing up in Freiburg im Breisgau, in southwest Germany. Fleisch also harks back to German 1920’s typefaces, droll picture books, newspaper advertising, and cigar box labels. A bit of a remix, Fleisch is not based on any particular era, region or style of blackletter, but rather is borrowed freely from various sources.
Fleisch features two styles or “flavors”, since they have the same weight and similar proportions: Fleisch Wurst features more square-ish letter counters and terminals, somewhat modernized — with a more chunky, earthy appearance. Fleisch Wolf is more pointy, slanty and detailed — with a lighter, more elegant and traditional appearance.
Raised on Lego blocks as a kid, the modularity of brokenscript always seemed like an intriguing formal exercise. With his basic idea for Fleisch, Joachim finally found his own approach: Letters aren’t just made up from lines of varying thickness. The ways in which the inside ‘negative spaces’ interact with their outside containers, and the spaces between letters, feel more important.
In Müller-Lancé’s opinion, the capital letters of many blackletter variants are too ornate to be set in all-caps therefore, Fleisch’s uppercase is simplified and ‘romanized’ to maintain legibility. In addition to the lining and oldstyle figures, Fleisch offers shapes more native to blackletter for the alternates of a, k, x, z, and Z, while the basic alphabet contains the more romanized shapes.
Each style also sports its own full set of decorative uppercase letters, lining figures, currencies and punctuation — great for large initials, drop caps, or entire headlines — and embellish them with a handful of regalia (symbols).
