Fanfare, designed for Berthold by poster and typeface designer Louis Oppenheim from 1927 onwards, is a so-called bastard or hybrid typeface. This designation stands for typefaces that cannot be clearly classified. Fanfare shows characteristics of broken and grotesque typefaces and combines them in one font - in our opinion very successfully! We therefore classify it as Expressionism, also because it was created in the period when buildings and other works of art had similarly expressive features.

Collection Fanfare E — Fanfare in aluminium, Plakadur, lead and wood.

Collection Fanfare M — Our largest and smallest Fanfare in 16 pt (lead) and 40 cic (wood).

In the meantime, we have gathered an enormous collection from font size 16p to 40cic. We use Fanfare for many projects, for example for one of our most popular posters: "Move fast and get shit done!"

This collection includes fonts made of wood and lead, of course, but also Plakadur and aluminium. Plakadur is a synthetic resin that was produced as Trolon by Dynamit Nobel in Troisdorf (sic) and used for billiard balls, ashtrays and costume jewellery. After extensive trials, the Berthold type foundry in Berlin chose trolon as the material for large poster type because of its durability and sharpness when printed. Hence the name Plaka- (poster) dur (durable=durable). Fonts made of aluminium are very robust, so we use them for embossing.

Ferdinand Ulrich has worked intensively with Louis Oppenheim’s work and the Fanfare. He talks about it in his lecture Fanfare: The expressive blackletter Grotesk from Berlin at the ANRT in Nancy (26 April 2019).

From Louis Oppenheim we also have the Lo Typeface.