Impact Type by Sophie Wietlisbach turned up in my automatic searches for typographic books recently. Published in January of this year, it is a survey of three Swiss companies – Caractères SA, Setag, and Novatype – that manufactured type for typewriters. It is motivated by the question, “Who designed this?”, something I’ve long wondered, myself.

Of course, I had to get a copy.

I’ve only just started reading it; I’ll post more when I’ve finished. The first half appears to be a well-illustrated overview of the process of design and manufacture for typewriter types, and the second half is full of loads of photos - from marketing materials, to catalogs, floor plans of factories, type drawings, type specimens, mechanical drawings for tooling, etc.

The book is available in English and French editions. I ended up getting mine from a US company on Abe Books, but it took a month to get to me, so perhaps it would have been just as well to order directly from Switzerland.

Slanted has some a little more info and photos











This last script is really interesting to me – it's not Artistic Script (aka Script #69). I've not seen it elsewhere. Guess I need to buy more Swiss machines, right?