One of Letterform Archive’s favorite prints, reimagined as a typeface.
Designer Lena Schmidt of foundry Spirit & Bones worked with Peter Malutzki to transform his 1981 alphabet. A set of three fonts bring Malutzki’s delightful and enigmatic figures to life, in either single or multiple colors.
About the Original Print
In 1980, Peter Malutzki, Heidi Hübner-Prochotta, and Manfred Prochotta founded the FlugBlatt-Presse in Lahnstein and Mainz and began producing broadsheets, which they called FlugBlätter and which also gave their press its name. They were mostly woodcuts or linocuts, combined with hand-set typography. When they finished the series in 1984 there were 67 FlugBlätter. During a Frankfurt Book Fair in the 1980s collector Rob Saunders acquired FlugBlatt No. 37 along with other prints. They became part of Letterform Archive’s collection when it opened in 2014.
There are some items in our collection that I think of as meta objects. Malutzki’s alphabet print is one. We have relationships with letters. We are shocked and intimidated by them, curious about and confused by them, in love with them. Mostly ‘J’: “Hey, friend, come check out this letter!”
Stephen Coles, Associate Curator, Letterform Archive
About the Typeface
In 2021, Letterform Archive posted the FlugBlatt No. 37 on social media, where type designer Lena Schmidt saw it, immediately fell in love with it, and developed the plan to bring it into the digital world. After contacting Peter Malutzki – who is still working as a book artist today – and in close consultation with him, Schmidt translated the letterforms into a font series, Malutzki Initials.
The three fonts can be used for black (single-color) text using the Regular style, or for multicolor text by applying different colors to the Letter Layer and Figure Layer styles.
Learn more in the PDF specimen
About the Foundry
Spirit & Bones is a German foundry based in Hamburg, founded in 2021 by artist and type designer Lena Schmidt, born 1981 in Bremen. First known for her huge wood carving paintings, Schmidt studied Fine Arts in Hamburg. From 2015 to 2019 she studied graphic design, with a focus on type design, at HAW Hamburg Department Design with the prominent type designer and calligrapher Jovica Veljović. With the founding of Spirit & Bones, Schmidt laid the foundation for a deeper and long-term engagement with the fascinating world of type design.
Font Technical Details
| Character Set | Latin Uppercase only. Basic punctuation. No numerals. (See specimen.) |
| Styles | Regular, Letter Layer, Figure Layer |
| Formats | OpenType (OTF/TTF), Web (WOFF, WOFF2) |
| License | The basic font license authorizes up to 5 users (desktop) or 15,000 unique pageviews/month (web). For an extended license, please contact us. |
Write A Review
Related Products
