Otl Aicher one of the lead­ing Ger­man graphic design­ers devel­oped in 1988 the type­face Rotis, named after the town Olt Aicher lived in. With Rotis he tried to cre­ate to max­i­mum leg­i­bilty face with a high x-height. Avail­able in four font fam­i­lies from sans to serif, Rotis type­face can be found every­where around you. Unfor­tu­nally Olt Aicher died in a traf­fic acci­dent in 1991. Lino­type cur­rently owns the Rotis Font Fam­ily, where all of the font vari­antions can be bought.

Rotis® gives an impres­sion of both strength and gen­eros­ity and all four ver­sions can be used inter­change­ably with one another. Rotis® is suit­able for book/text, documentation/business reports, busi­ness cor­re­spon­dence, mag­a­zines, news­pa­pers, posters, adver­ti­ments, mul­ti­me­dia, cor­po­rate design. from Lino­type

Dur­ing my hol­i­day in the beau­ti­ful Ger­man Steiger­wald (near Nürn­berg and Bam­berg) I came across the Rotis Font Fam­ily quite often, this is a photo show­case col­lec­tion of the Font Familiy Rotis Sans.

A book about photography

This is where I first spot­ted Rotis, dur­ing a visit at the book­store and came to the idea to putting this post together. As you can see, Rotis works well for leg­i­bil­ity and design.

Street Signs

We were walk­ing down the streets where I took this photo of a small bill­board, The font fam­ily Rotis has enough detail to show at large points. Good read­able from a distance.

Cafe Sig­nage

Sit­ting down for a espresso where I saw this acrylic name­plate, clearly the usage of the not­i­ca­ble ´e´ of Rotis. A good color usage as where the brick will look dark from a dis­tance the off-white let­ter­ing will stand out.

1000 Jahre Bamberg

Dur­ing the cel­e­bra­tion of 1000 years of the city Bam­berg var­i­ous infor­ma­tion sign­posts has been put up in the city (now only avail­able in the Church), a clear usage of font Rotis.

Museum Nürn­berg

We went to var­i­ous museum in Nürn­berg, but this one got my atten­tion. The open­ing­hours and detailed infor­ma­tion folder about the museum was all cre­ated using Rotis.

Shop­ping

My wife wanted to go shop­ping, so I sat down and read some mag­a­zines. Here I spot­ted Rotis in a Loreal print ad, see the payoff.

Escape route plan

When walk­ing down a mayor city­hall I spot­ted this Escape sig­nage. All type is printed using Rotis font fam­ily, easy to read.

Book­store

Going to a book­store in Ger­many is a plea­sure for all typophiles, you can rec­og­nize a font on almost every cover you see. I spot­ted the Rotis on the cover of this book.

Door Sig­nage

A small sig­nage for a local com­pany called Temme uses Rotis on their door sig­nage, a bold ver­sions and a reg­u­lar are dis­played in the design.

Museum Gerolzhofen

When vis­it­ing the museum in the small city of Gerolzhofen you can find the open­ing­hours plate cre­ated using the font Rotis. With so many lines and text Rotis proves a clear legibilty.

Arte Caffe

At the tourist guide shop I found this busi­ness card all designed using the type Rotis. Unfor­tu­nally we could not find the coffe shop, but I sure liked the design.

Kind of noodles

At the gro­cery we bought some kind of noo­dles (Spät­zle), you can get this typ­i­cal Ger­man kind of noo­dle with many dishes. At the pack­age I spot­ted the Rotis, small printed but readable.

Rotling Wine

With food you can drink wine, I bought this dry Franken white wine of 2007. The label was printed using the type Rotis. If you can find a bot­tle I can sug­gested it, tasted very good.

Steiger­wald walk

The area we stayed was Steiger­wald, a great for­rest area and we went for many walks there. Our guide was a map of the area, with on the front­page a design using Rotis.

Shop­ping­bag

At the local bak­ery we bought typ­i­cal Ger­man bread (really dark with good taste), we car­ried the bread in this paperbag, printed with the details of the bak­ery using Rotis.

Franken Brun­nen

Water is good for every­body and Franken Brun­nen does it all the way, they use Rotis on almost every form of visual communication.

Avail­abil­ity of Font Fam­ily Rotis

The font pack­age is avail­able in four type fam­i­lies, via Linotype:

• Rotis® Serif Font Family
• Rotis® Sans Serif Font Family
• Rotis® Semi Sans Font Family
• Rotis® Semi Serif Font Family

Per­son­ally I like Rotis Sans Serif Font Fam­ily (2nd on the list above) the best, it has a very dis­tinc­tive look and feel with a high leg­i­bilty for usage in many fields of visual communication.

More infor­ma­tion about Olt Aicher

There is much writ­ten about Olt Aicher who was not only a font designer but also a graphic designer who had a big part in design­ing the Münich Olympic Games in 1972.

• Infor­ma­tion about Olt Aicher at Wikipedia.
• Great arti­cle about Olt Aicher at Under­con­sid­er­a­tion.
• Work from Olt Aicher at a huge flickr pool to be found here.
• The graphic design work he cre­ated for the Münich Olympic Games at this web­site.
• Other inter­est­ing and infor­ma­tive arti­cle about the type Rotis, here at manic.com.

So tell me..

Did you have your Rotis today?