Name: Wolpe Fanfare
Type: Retail typeface
Publisher: Monotype
Release year: 2017
Purchase links: MyFonts
Wolpe Fanfare is a revival typeface that was released as a part of Berthold Wolpe Collection in 2017. It’s an all-cap condensed sans typeface for display use that was originally designed by Berthold Wolpe in 1937. After developing typefaces like Albertus, Wolpe started working at Fanfare Press. He made two display typefaces produced at Monotype, Fanfare being the second among them.
Wolpe went on to join the British publisher Faber & Faber from 1941, and worked as a book jacket designer. His signature design style was big condensed letters with minimal to no illustration, and the lettering style similar to Fanfare can be seen in his jackets, most notably Lawrence Durrell’s Justine and Ariel: Poems by Sylvia Plath. The typeface has a lot of energy owing to the slanted stems and baseline which you can see prominently in the old BOAC posters. And its compact horizontal proportion makes great use of portrait space of book jackets.
In the revival, I have added four lighter weights where there was one rather dark weight. The original all-cap design is now joined by a set of titling small caps. I had a lot of fun designing the new Greek and Cyrillic which are suitably energetic, more so in the stylistic sets.
Thankfully, Faber & Faber started using all of the Wolpe Collection typefaces. Wolpe Fanfare made its apt return in F&F’s re-release of Justine which was a joy to discover.