Fodor is a geometrical typeface

Typeface

In typography, a typeface is the artistic representation or interpretation of characters; it is the way the type looks. Each type is designed and there are thousands of different typefaces in existence, with new ones being developed constantly....

 designed by Dutch

Netherlands

The Netherlands is a constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, located mainly in North-West Europe and with several islands in the Caribbean. Mainland Netherlands borders the North Sea to the north and west, Belgium to the south, and Germany to the east, and shares maritime borders...

 graphic design

Graphic design

Graphic design is a creative process – most often involving a client and a designer and usually completed in conjunction with producers of form – undertaken in order to convey a specific message to a targeted audience...

er Wim Crouwel

Wim Crouwel

Willem Hendrik Crouwel is a Dutch graphic designer and typographer.Between 1947 and 1949 he studied Fine Arts at Academie Minerva in Groningen, The Netherlands...

, around 1973.

History

Fodor was designed for the covers of the magazine published by Museum Fodor in Amsterdam

Amsterdam

Amsterdam is the largest city and the capital of the Netherlands. The current position of Amsterdam as capital city of the Kingdom of the Netherlands is governed by the constitution of August 24, 1815 and its successors. Amsterdam has a population of 783,364 within city limits, an urban population...

. The main text on the covers were set with a electric typewriter

Typewriter

A typewriter is a mechanical or electromechanical device with keys that, when pressed, cause characters to be printed on a medium, usually paper. Typically one character is printed per keypress, and the machine prints the characters by making ink impressions of type elements similar to the pieces...

, and the monospaced typeface that it used created strong horizontal and vertical lines. Crouwel made these visible by using a regular pattern of pink dots on an orange background. He then used this grid to draw the letters fodor and a set of numbers. Later, a complete alphabet was developed from the wordmark.

Digital Fodor

The digital version of Fodor was digitized by the type foundry

Type foundry

A type foundry is a company that designs or distributes typefaces. Originally, type foundries manufactured and sold metal and wood typefaces and matrices for line-casting machines like the Linotype and Monotype machines designed to be printed on letterpress printers...

 The Foundry in London. It is part of the 3 Crouwel collection. Other typefaces in this collection are Gridnik

Gridnik (typeface)

Gridnik is a geometrical typeface designed by Dutch graphic designer Wim Crouwel, in 1974. It is the digital version of the typewriter typeface Olivetti Politene.-History:...

, New Alphabet

New Alphabet (typeface)

-History:New Alphabet is a personal, experimental project of Crouwel. The typeface embraces the limitations of the cathode ray tube technology used by early data display screens and phototypesetting equipment and thus only contains horizontal and vertical strokes. Conventional typefaces can suffer...

, Stedelijk and Catalogue.

Other typefaces by Crouwel

• Gridnik
  Gridnik (typeface)
  Gridnik is a geometrical typeface designed by Dutch graphic designer Wim Crouwel, in 1974. It is the digital version of the typewriter typeface Olivetti Politene.-History:...
  
  
• New Alphabet
  New Alphabet (typeface)
  -History:New Alphabet is a personal, experimental project of Crouwel. The typeface embraces the limitations of the cathode ray tube technology used by early data display screens and phototypesetting equipment and thus only contains horizontal and vertical strokes. Conventional typefaces can suffer...
  
  

External links

• Architype 3 Crouwel collection on The Foundry