Berliner Börsen-Courier
Artist
Hans Rudi Erdt
1883–1918. Plakatstil designer. Born in Benediktbeuern, Bavaria.
Erdt trained in Munich and moved to Berlin around 1908, where he worked closely with the printer Hollerbaum & Schmidt. With Lucian Bernhard, Julius Klinger and Julius Gipkens he shaped the Plakatstil, or object poster.
His posters for Opel, Manoli and Problem cigarettes reduced the message to a product and a word. He drew his letters himself, from geometric capitals to soft, bouncy serifs.
- Hans Rudi Erdt
- 1913
- Plakatstil
- Germany
- Serif, Italic
- Hollerbaum & Schmidt, Berlin
- Private. Image from a Bonhams auction listing
- Bonhams sale 30147, lot 13
- Wikimedia Commons
- Public domain
Fonts
Soft Serif
Letters from the poster
Full typeface
Capitals
Lowercase
Lettering style
Download
Soft Italic
Letters from the poster
Full typeface
Capitals
Lowercase
Download
History
The Berliner Börsen-Courier was a Berlin daily, founded in 1868 as a financial paper and later known as much for its culture pages as for the markets. In 1913 Erdt gave it a poster with a simple claim: men and women both read it.
The lettering is unusual for the Plakatstil, which mostly favoured plain capitals. Erdt drew a heavy serif with soft corners and a full lowercase, then a matching italic for the line underneath. The italic even keeps the old long s: leſen, not lesen.
It was printed by Hollerbaum & Schmidt in Berlin. The scan on Wikimedia Commons comes from a Bonhams auction listing.
Source and rights
Hans Rudi Erdt died in 1918. His work entered the public domain on 1 January 1989.
Scan from Wikimedia Commons, catalogue record Bonhams sale 30147, lot 13. Brand names on the poster belong to their owners and are never used as font names.
Related posters
Same era, lettering or artist.
