Justus Erich Walbaum

Justus Erich Walbaum

Walbaum type in roman and Fraktur, in modern revivals

Justus Erich Walbaum (25 January 1768 – 21 June 1837) was a prominent German typefounder and punchcutter of the late 18th and early 19th centuries.

Walbaum was a punchcutter, who carved steel punches used as a master to stamp matrices, the moulds used to cast metal type. Walbaum was born in Steinlah, a district of the town of Haverlah in modern Lower Saxony. Based first in Goslar and later in Weimar, he created type in the Didone style, also known as the 'rational' or 'modern' style. This style, inspired by the work of type designers such as the Didot family and Giambattista Bodoni, involved a sharper contrast between thick and thin strokes than was used previously, and a more modulated design. Jan Tschichold described his designs as 'the most beautiful German version' of modern type. He also created type in the Fraktur style of blackletter.

Walbaum's style of type was influential in his lifetime and the following century. It became less popular in the twentieth century due to a change in taste which preferred 'old-style' serif letterforms, based on printing before the nineteenth century. However, his work has remained popular, particularly in Germany, and revivals have been created by Monotype, Linotype, Berthold and others in the twentieth century, and by František Štorm more recently.

Justus Erich Walbaum Straße, a street named after Walbaum in his birthplace of Steinlah. None of this lettering uses his fonts, but rather DIN 1451 or a variant of it below and stencilled lettering above.

While he did not create type in the style, the basic structure of his letterforms has been suggested as an influence on early sans-serif typefaces of the nineteenth century and those inspired by them, such as Akzidenz-Grotesk, Univers and Helvetica.