Petra Dočekalová 2022 marked 125th anniversary of birth of a master calligrapher and a great Czech typographer Oldřich Menhart. We believe that this is a great opportunity to finally release high-quality digitizations of his iconic typefaces. For the past few years, we have been intensively researching in the museum archives, studying Menhart’s estate, correspondence, reading his textbooks and technical articles, and collecting both common prints and rare bibliophilis. As a result, we have gathered enough background material for high-quality digitization of his works. We like to call it digital archaeology. We have subsequently adopted Menhart’s philosophy of the most rigorous and responsible approach to type design and the entire production process, and have attempted with the same dedication and uncompromisingness to achieve the best results that today’s technology allows. The result is the first five fonts. Thus, we’d like to exclusively present to ATypI attendees the insights of entire process through the stories of the superbly digitized fonts.
We’ve been working on this marvel project since 2017. You can find the microsite here: www.oldrichmenhart.com The topic of Oldrich Menhart is huge and we wish to get one of the longer windows to share as much materials as possible.