Berthold Akzidenz-Grotesk BE

Trying to establish the exact dates and authorship of Berthold’s extensive Akzidenz-Grotesk typeface family is quite a challenge. In reality: it’s originally the work of a range of now-anonymous authors, who were responsible for drawing and cutting the prototypes in metal during the late nineteenth century. Berthold started issuing the first Akzidenz-Grotesk types as a family in 1898, and they were immediately successful. Other foundries had their own releases, typically labelled as ‘grotesque’ or ‘gothic’ typefaces.

The problem with these original sans-serif typefaces was the visual inconsistencies between fonts within the same type family. Since each font was drawn to meet the specific needs of specific customers, the original grotesque typefaces were charmingly irregular in a somewhat-naïve manner.

When grotesque types became popular again in the 1950s during the International Style movement, many typefoundries worked to produce refined and reformed versions of their existing type designs. Berthold’s answer was to revise Akzidenz-Grotesk, under the supervision of Günter Gerhard Lange and his colleagues. 1957 marks the release of a range of four significant neogrotesque typefaces:

• Akzidenz-Grotesk from Berthold;
• Folio from Bauer;
• Neue Haas Grotesk (Helvetica) from Haas, Stempel and Linotype;
• Univers from Deberny & Peignot and Monotype, designed by Adrian Frutiger.

Berthold continued updating Akzidenz-Grotesk through the 1960s under Lange’s supervision, adding new weights, condensed, and extended fonts. The AG typeface family designed during the 1950s and 1960s is labelled today as ‘Berthold Akzidenz-Grotesk’.

Lange revisited Akzidenz-Grotesk in the early 1970s, drawing a new consistent design called ‘AG Book’. In the 1980s, Lange returned to the original 1898 fonts, and designed a new digital family called ‘AG Old Face’. This design reflects the irregular character of the original types, which in turn look like they were drawn by draftsmen for engineers.

In the early 2000s, the new Berthold Types corporation commissioned a revised version of the typeface named ‘Akzidenz-Grotesk Next’. This new typeface was produced under the consultation of original Berthold designers like Dieter Hofrichter, Günter Gerhard Lange, and Bernd Möllenstädt. Akzidenz-Grotesk Next was released in 2006.

Understanding the relationship between Adobe and Berthold – as well as the current naming method for Berthold’s typefaces – requires a bit of explanation. What’s most important to understand is that Berthold isn’t one company: it’s really two separate companies:

• Hermann Berthold AG, Berlin (1858–1993);
• Berthold Types, Chicago (1998—).

If you go to the current Berthold Types website, you’ll notice that there’s a distinct naming system for each of the company’s typefaces:

• Pro+ (OpenType format: support for Extended Latin, Greek & Cyrillic alphabets);
• Pro (OpenType format: support for Extended Latin alphabets);
• Standard (OpenType format: support for Western Eurpoean Latin alphabets);
• BQ (Formerly PostScript Type 1 format*: support for Western Eurpoean Latin alphabets);
• BE (Formerly PostScript Type 1 format*: support for Western Eurpoean Latin alphabets).

* Please note that Berthold now licenses its BE and BQ font sets in the OpenType format, rather than in the older PostScript Type 1 format.

Before Hermann Berthold AG went out of business in 1993, they were one of several major typefoundries that the Adobe Type Group approached in the 1980s and 1990s about building a comprehensive library of digital typefaces. Adobe had two goals in mind for making digital typefaces available in the PostScript Type 1 format (subsumed later as part of the OpenType standard):

• To produce digital versions of popular typefaces from existing foundries;
• To design and produce new typefaces as part of the Adobe Originals programme.

The Adobe Type Group worked with Bauer, Berthold, ITC, Linotype, Monotype, and other foundries. As a consequence, Adobe was granted licenses to include these converted fonts with the Adobe Type Library and Font Folio. Most of the popular classic typefaces still in use today are a result of this programme, including Berthold’s types like Akzidenz-Grotesk.

But Berthold’s participation in the Adobe Type Library was short-lived: in 1993, the original company went out of business. Adobe kept licensing Berthold fonts until around 1998, when the new Berthold Types was established, based upon the intellectual property and trademarks of the original company. Adobe’s Font Folio 7 included Berthold’s typefaces, but Font Folio 8 did not. This is where the historical details get somewhat blurred.

To understand what happened, it’s important to understand the founding of Berthold Types in 1998. The new company was established by Harvey and Melissa Hunt, based in Chicago. Harvey – who died in April 2022 – had been a major customer of Hermann Berthold AG. After the original company went bankrupt, the Hunts acquired the companies assets, and formed Berthold Types.

At that point, it was necessary for Adobe Systems and the new corporation to renegotiate the existing licensing agreement. Those negotiations were unsuccessful, which resulted in all of Berthold’s typefaces being withdrawn from Adobe’s Type Library and Font Folio. Existing licence holders could continue to use the Berthold fonts they had licensed from Adobe, but Adobe could no longer issue new licences.

The Berthold typefaces that were part of the Adobe Type Library – and originally digitized by Adobe – became Berthold Type’s ‘BE’ (Berthold Exklusiv) line of PostScript Type 1 fonts. Hermann Berthold AG also licensed its own typefaces directly: these fonts became the ‘BQ’ (Berthold Qualität) line of PostScript Type 1 fonts. Thus the major difference between Berthold’s BE and BQ lines of PostScript Type 1 font libraries is their origin. Certain BQ fonts – like Corporate A, E, & S – were only licensed by Berthold, and were never available from Adobe.

When the new Berthold Types company started issuing OpenType fonts, they continued licensing the older BE and BQ fonts in PostScript Type 1 format. OpenType fonts were licensed as ‘Standard’, ‘Pro’, and ‘Pro+’ fonts, depending upon what alphabets and character sets you needed. Today, the BE and BQ fonts are also sold in the OpenType format.

What’s the difference today between Berthold’s Standard, BE, and BQ fonts? Not much: they’re all OpenType, and support Western European languages and the basic Latin alphabet. They simply continue to exist because of Berthold’s rich and rather complex history, and because of the minor differences between Adobe’s and Berthold’s specific digitizations of the historical Hermann Berthold AG typefaces.

If you go to the Adobe Fonts website today (June 2022), you’ll notice that Berthold is not one of the many typefoundries listed. And unless something substantial happens, it’ll most likely stay that way: Adobe and Berthold haven’t had a licensing agreement since 1998. If you need to license popular Berthold typefaces – like the many flavours of Akzidenz-Grotesk, Catull, Corporate, Delta, Formata, Imago, Nofret, &c. – you’ll need to license them directly from Berthold Types.

If you have to choose which version of Akzidenz-Grotesk to use, the single-most important matter is to verify that you have the appropriate licences. The ‘Pro+’ versions of Berthold Akzidenz-Grotesk and AG Book both have comprehensive support for languages using the Latin, Greek, and Cyrillic alphabets. Otherwise, it’s down to a matter of personal taste. In general, Akzidenz-Grotesk has more character than more regular, sanitized neogrotesques like Helvetica and Univers. That’s why Akzidenz-Grotesk has remained in continual use for 125 years.

I hope that answers your question. If not, please let me know.

Best regards
Andrew

–30–

If you scroll to the bottom of that page on the Berthold site you will find the text that @RRR101 posted.

The statement, "The BQ and BE OpenType Basic versions Correspond to the Berthold BQ and BE Adobe PostScript Type 1 versions Legacy," which you were (understandably) confused about means: "The versions we call 'OpenType Basic' are just straight conversions of our original Type 1 font files to the OpenType format." In other words, they don't have any OpenType features--such as additional character sets, alternates, etc.--other than Unicode support.

Fonts are software, so a conversion utility like Fontlab's Transtype can extract the information from an old Postscript Type 1 or TrueType font and repackage it in OpenType format without actually adding anything. Berthold calls these "Basic" versions, as opposed to Standard (supports Western European languages), Pro (extended support for European languages), and Pro+ (additional orthographies such as Cyrillic and Greek). Other foundries have different naming conventions.

Note also that Berthold offers "Postscript OTF" and "TrueType TTF" versions of some of these fonts. Despite the names, both are OpenType format. Internally, the glyphs are formed using different outline mathematics (Bezier curves vs. quadratic), but for all usual purposes they are the same.

Berthold first published Akzidenz-Grotesk in 1898. Originally named “Accidenz-Grotesk” the design originates from Royal Grotesk light by royal type-cutter Ferdinand Theinhardt. The Theinhardt foundry later merged with Berthold and also supplied the regular, medium and bold weights.

In the 1950s Günter Gerhard Lange, then art director at Berthold, began a project to enlarge the typeface family, adding a larger character set, but retaining all of the idiosyncrasies of the 1898 face. Under the direction of Günter Gerhard Lange, Berthold added AG Medium Italic (1963), AG ExtraBold (1966) , AG Italic (1967), AG ExtraBold Condensed & Italic (1968), AG Super (1968).

Lange was instrumental in developing the Akzidenz-Grotesk program at Berthold in the 1950s and 1960s. In 2001 Lange helped Berthold complete the AG series with the additions of AG light italic, Super Italic, light condensed, condensed, medium condensed, extrabold italic, light extended italic, extended italic and medium extended italic.

You might find these links informative:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akzidenz-Grotesk      

        and this:

http://typedia.com/explore/typeface/akzidenz-grotesk/

for Akzidenz Grotesk specifically and this for grotesques in general:     Acumin – History

It goes back quite a bit (way before digital type) and was also the inspiration for Helvetica.  You may not find the convenient hard date you are looking for, but you will get a boatload of back history.