The infinite calendar was printed from original woodtype on a Korrex Frankfurt proof press in the Advent season of 2014 by Erik, his son Dylan and myself on extra rough 160 gsm MetaPaper in three colors, including white on the red cover. The format is 35×70 cm. Jan Gassel organized production and had the calendar backed with a heavy grey card, spiral-binding was executed by Ralf Fischer at Buks in Berlin. 

We included all of our seven favorite typefaces available at p98a and assigned them to each day of the week:

After a weekend of leisure, Monday gets serious again: The perfect start for Akzidenz Grotesk. While paternity remains unsolved, its daughters Univers, Folio and Helvetica got all the fame, but lost AG’s warmth at the same time. We are limited to weights and sizes of our type at p98a. Read more about it in our →collection.

Tuesdays come with a close relative of Block Reklameschrift, known as HWT Artz, which Erik designed and donated for Hamilton Wood Type. To make life easier for the type cutters, Artz is equipped with round edges and corners. It has been cut in wood in several sizes and we like to use it in many of our →posters at p98a.

The middle of the week is more casual. Signal, a popular script typeface released with Berthold in 1931, suits the notion. In a time before OpenType features were around, Signal mastered the difficulty of connecting letters and looks to be written in one stroke – more or less.

For Thursday or “Thor’s day” (check your Norse mythology) we could not have found a more fitting typeface than Louis Oppenheim’s (1873–1936) Fanfare, released with Berthold in 1927, a hermaphrodite of sans serif and gothic blackletter. The axe-like ‘d’ suits the popularity of the hammer-wielding God of the Viking Age.

On Friday evenings people go out in suits and dresses. What could be more appropriate than a neo-classic typeface (or, as some English-speakers refer to them: “didone”)? Rob Roy Kelly (American Wood Type, 1969) simply named them “roman” (a design first spotted in the 1820s), but they really should be called Fat Face. Look at the ‘a’!

For Saturday we selected Carlos Winkow’s (1882–1952) Reporter, an imitation of a shop owner’s wet brush stroke handwriting, released with Joh. Wagner Type Foundry in 1939. While “Reporter No. 1” has plain strokes, only “No. 2” features the negative in-lines, lending this script face a certain spunkiness.

When the first edition of Luther’s translated bible was published in 1534, the Wittenberg-based printer Hans Lufft chose a Fraktur-style blackletter typeface. Lucien Bernhard’s bold condensed Bernhard Fraktur, released with the Flinsch Type Foundry in 1913, seemed fitting for our typographic interpretation of Sunday.

While the calendar lasts forever, our supplies don’t. We still have a few copies left from the original edition of 75, all signed and dated. For this year’s season we are offering each for €129,80 in our →shop.