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Walbaum font family

Overview

A careful restoration of 200-year-old typeface Walbaum, this modern serif blends charm and warmth together – offering a range of impressively sculpted display forms, and hard-working text weights. There isn't a place where Walbaum can’t work. From massive billboards, to micro-type on e-readers, this family has it covered.

Originally designed in Germany in the early 1800s, Justus Erich Walbaum’s modern typefaces never garnered the audience or acclaim they deserved. The calamity of the Napoleonic Wars and the tragic death of Walbaum's son and typefounding heir, Theodor, combined to remove his faces from any widespread use for nearly one hundred years. Two centuries later, Monotype designers, Carl Crossgrove and Charles Nix discovered their mutual admiration for Walbaum and set out to give it the contemporary facelift it deserved. With the mantra “What Would Justus Do?” always in mind, they set out to expand and update the family for today's varied print and digital environments. They split the work into three parts: Crossgrove taking on the workhorse text weights; Nix tackling the dramatic display range; and Monotype designer Juan Villanueva developing the rich trove of ornaments found in Walbaum’s original specimens.

Justus Walbaum’s original display sizes were relatively limited. But given the time, the tools, and the array of type uses of today, what would Justus have made? Nix's display designs dramatically expand the scope, preserving the fluid transition from small to large, but adding a striking array of thin to black weights. Some inspiration for the darker weights came from the work of Walbaum’s son, Theodor, who pushed his father’s modern style far more into the arena of the corpulent. Nix looked to push it even further, taking cues from Noguchi’s sculpture, revealing form by carefully subtracting from a solid mass. The lowercase in the fattest, blackest weights are like slabs of basalt subtly sculpted to yield letters.

Crossgrove, a master of text type, focused on what originally drew him to Walbaum’s work—the combination of legibility and warmth lacking in so many other modern families. Like a deft conservator, he carefully preserved the original spacing, contrast, and proportions, while introducing details that allow the designs to fully function in the 21st century. A range of weights; a much more robust character set; and the ability to move seamlessly between the micro and macro of the text range are just a few of the future-proofing steps Crossgrove introduced.

For Villanueva, the inspiration was to capture the beauty that was so evident in the ornaments that Nix found while researching original specimens in New York, Leipzig, and Berlin. He took hundreds of detailed photos giving Juan a nearly microscopic view of Walbaum’s work. Villanueva found inspiration in the idea that ornaments are a rare commodity in today’s typographic market. He felt that these are not only an important part of the Walbaum legacy, but that they’re exciting and relevant to today’s typographic designer.

Description
File name walbaumdisp-rg.ttf
walbaumdisp-bd.ttf
walbaumdisp-bdit.ttf
walbaumdisp-hv-rg.ttf
walbaumdisp-hv-it.ttf
walbaumdisp-it.ttf
walbaumdisp-lt-rg.ttf
walbaumdisp-lt-it.ttf
walbaumdisp-sb-rg.ttf
walbaumdisp-sb-it.ttf
walbaumhead-rg.ttf
walbaumhead-bd.ttf
walbaumhead-bdit.ttf
walbaumhead-it.ttf
walbaumtext-rg.ttf
walbaumtext-bd.ttf
walbaumtext-bdit.ttf
walbaumtext-it.ttf
Styles & Weights Walbaum Display
Walbaum Display Bold
Walbaum Display Bold Italic
Walbaum Display Heavy
Walbaum Display Heavy Italic
Walbaum Display Italic
Walbaum Display Light
Walbaum Display Light Italic
Walbaum Display SemiBold
Walbaum Display SemiBold Italic
Walbaum Heading
Walbaum Heading Bold
Walbaum Heading Bold Italic
Walbaum Heading Italic
Walbaum Text
Walbaum Text Bold
Walbaum Text Bold Italic
Walbaum Text Italic
Copyright Copyright © 2018 Monotype Imaging Inc. All rights reserved.
Designers Juan Villanueva, Charles Nix, Carl Crossgrove, Lynne Yun, Justus Erich Walbaum
Font vendor Monotype Corporation
Script Tags dlng:'Latn'
slng:'Latn'
Code pages 1252 Latin 1
1250 Latin 2: Eastern Europe
1254 Turkish
1257 Windows Baltic
Fixed pitch False

Licensing and redistribution info

  • Font redistribution FAQ for Windows
  • License Microsoft fonts for enterprises, web developers, for hardware & software redistribution or server installations

Products that supply this font

This typeface is also available within Office applications. For more information visit this page.

Style & weight examples

Walbaum Display

Walbaum Display sample

Walbaum Display Bold

Walbaum Display Bold sample

Walbaum Bold Italic

Walbaum Bold Italic sample

Walbaum Display Heavy

Walbaum Display Heavy sample

Walbaum Display Heavy Italic

Walbaum Display Heavy Italic sample

Walbaum Display Italic

Walbaum Display Italic sample

Walbaum Display Light

Walbaum Display Light sample

Walbaum Display Light Italic

Walbaum Display Light Italic sample

Walbaum Display SemiBold

Walbaum Display SemiBold sample

Walbaum Display SemiBold Italic

Walbaum Display SemiBold Italic sample

Walbaum Heading

Walbaum Heading sample

Walbaum Heading Bold

Walbaum Heading Bold sample

Walbaum Heading Bold Italic

Walbaum Heading Bold Italic sample

Walbaum Heading Italic

Walbaum Heading Italic sample

Walbaum Text

Walbaum Text sample

Walbaum Text Bold

Walbaum Text Bold sample

Walbaum Text Bold Italic

Walbaum Text Bold Italic sample

Walbaum Text Italic

Walbaum sample