Albertus Nova

Designer: Toshi Omagari

Berthold Wolpe began working on Albertus in 1932, at the encouragement of Stanley Morison. Morison saw an example of Wolpeís inscriptual lettering and liked it so much that he commissioned a typeface based on the design. Tilting caps were released first, in 1935. These were followed with roman upper and lowercase in 1938 and a light weight in 1940. Albertus Nova is a faithful digital revival of this earlier design and is one of the five suites of designs in the Berthold Wolpe Collection of typefaces. This new design enlarges the family from its previous two weights to a robust family of five ranging from a svelte thin to a commanding black. Wolpe was born in Germany, and was a student of Rudolf Koch. He began his career at the Klingspor foundry in Offenbach but moved to England in 1932. While Wolpe designed several typefaces, his main body of work was the many book jackets he designed for Faber & Faber publishers. Wolpe died in 1989 at the age of 84.