My Sample

ViabellaTH CE Medium

Karl-Heinz Lange und Elsner, Flake GbR, 2009
Item number 159104-2, Net price 26.00 EUR

The Typeface – A Short Portrait
The script version of the typeface Viabella introduces us to the calligraphic side of the Berlin type designer and typographer Karl-Heinz Lange. The sketches for this script typeface, which resulted from the close cooperation with Veronika Elsner and Günther Flake, found their roots in sketch drawings which Karl-Heinz Lange had already drawn in the 1980’s.

For the Viabella design, Karl-Heinz Lange drew the basic letterforms of the Black and Regular cuts with a brush. He then re-worked the drawings and transferred them on to tracing paper. The design studio Elsner+Flake in Hamburg cut these typeface extensions and later digitized them manually with the help of the IKARUS Sustem. With the Regular cut as a basis, Elsner+Flake extended the family with the Light version and interpolated and re-worked the Medium weight. The completion of the family was taken over by the type designer Björn Gogalla who had done the same kind of work on Rotola, a design which Karl-Heinz Lange had also created for Elsner+Flake.

While Viabella was originally conceived as a headline typeface, its lighter weights can certainly be used for shorter text applications. The Black version creates powerful headlines with highly effective accents. With the help of swashes, which are available for all weights, the user can lighten up longer texts and add special character to titles.

In contrast to pure headline fonts, Viabella has been enriched by an extensive complement of special characters. In addition to the Europa-Plus character set which allows setting type in over 70 latin-based languages, the user will find multiple versions of numerals as well as oldstyle figures, tabular and proportional lining figures, diagonal fractions, and a complete set of superior and inferior figures and fractions (60%).

With such a rich character set, Viabella is not only ideal for many different uses in the areas of newspaper, magazine and advertising but it will surely be chosen for the design of greeting cards, invitations and other design projects within the privat sphere. [Flake.02/9]

Viabella and Viabella Italic are available exclusively from www.fonts4ever.com with the OpenType Pro as well as a standard character set with or without swashes for both Macintosh or Windows applications.


The Designer – A Short Portrait
Karl-Heinz Lange was born on July 29, 1929 in Wiesenkirch in West Prussia. He was enrolled in the Humanistic Gymnasium at Elbing from 1939 to 1945 and changed to the Wernigerode High School after his family had to flee to central Germany. From 1949 to 1951, Karl-Heinz Lange studied at the Werkkunstschule Halle, where one of his teachers was Professor Post. After 1951, he continued his studies at the Hochschule for Grafik und Buchkunst in Leipzig with an emphasis on book design. He received his diploma in 1955 with distinction based on his design of a hot metal typeface.

From 1956 to 1961, Karl-Heinz Lange worked as a lecturer for Type and Commercial Graphics at the Hochschule für Angewandte Kunst in Magdeburg. From 1961 to 1963, he taught at the Hochschule für Grafik und Buchkunst in Leipzig, and finally as a freelance commercial designer in Magdeburg. He worked on a variety of assignments, one of which was the design of trick films. From 1969 to 1976 he took the position of Artistic Director of the Henschelverlag, Berlin; from 1976 to 1994 he was Professor of Type and Typography at the Fachschule für Werbung und Gestaltung in Berlin; and, until 2004, he taught at various institutes for advanced professional education. From 2005 to 2007 he taught at the Fachhochschule Magdegburg/Stendal.

Karl-Heinz Lange was awarded the second prize at the »International Type Design Contest 1971« for a headline typeface, and, in 1984, at the XI. Biannual of Graphic Design in Brno, he won a Silver Medal for the design of his typeface family Publica. He created the telephone book typeface Minima and re-designed the Typoart Super Grotesk (Arno Drescher, 1930) as well as the Newspaper typeface Magna by Herbert Thannhaeuser for the use on digital typesetting systems.

To the day of his death on June 29, 2010, Karl-Heinz Lange lived and worked as a type designer. Among others, he closely followed the designs of the typefaces which were developed under his guidance for Typoart: “Publica”, “Typoart Super Grotesk” and “Minima” which he launched as “Publicala”, “Minimala” and “Superla” in 2009. In cooperation with Elsner+Flake, he developed the Typeface family “Rotola” between 2006 and 2009 as well as the script families of the “Viabella” series. To the end, he followed the development of his first typeface, the “Diplom Antiqua”, which he also wanted to bring to market together with Elsner+Flake. [Flake.07/10]


Copyright and Trademark
Copyright of design and/or digital redesign and Trademark by Veronika Elsner, Günther Flake GbR or its licensors. Copyright of digital font software by Veronika Elsner, Günther Flake GbR. This font software may not be reproduced, modified, decoded, disclosed, or transferred without the written approval of Veronika Elsner, Günther Flake GbR. All rights reserved.

Veronika Elsner, Günther Flake GbR reserve the right of changes and to revise this font software and change the contents without any obligation to notify any person of such revision or changes.