BureauGrot

by The Font Bureau

BUREAU GROT is a tough, editorial-based grotesque sans serif typeface created by David Berlow based off British grotesque typefaces from the nineteenth century. It has an extensive family with 27 styles ranging from Extra Compressed to Ultra Black, ideal for headlines and display text. It was released under Font Bureau, a Massachusetts foundry founded by Roger Black and David Berlow, who specialize in type for magazine and newspaper publishers.

All 27 styles of Bureau Grot

BUREAU GROT was created based off a specimen of type titled Grotesque from British type foundry, Stephenson Blake. Stephenson Blake’s grotesque faces came in a variety of weights which were first created in the late 19th century.

Blake Stephenson’s intention was to create a clean, straightforward, and non-decorative series of sans serif typefaces. They became popular in British commercial printing in the metal type era, which birthed a resurgence of “industrial” sans-serifs around the 1950s.

Flash forward to the late twentieth century and David Berlow found himself bringing the character and grit of Grotesque to a new digital format, in the form of Bureau Grotesque. The current family was created in 1989 and further weights were designed by Berlow for the launches of Entertainment Weekly and the Madrid daily El Sol, bringing the total to twelve styles by 1993.

TOP Grotesque no. 8 On a metal type specimen sheet from the late 19th century

RIGHT Entertainment Weekly cover from April 1992 typset in Bureau Grot.

In 2006, Jill Pichotta, Christian Schwartz, and Richard Lipton rounded it out into a series of 27 styles. With its narrow and wide styles, Bureau Grot is an ideal headline face for compact columns and large display typography. The lighter weights of the normal and wide styles were designed to be scaled all the way to 14px.

DAVID BERLOW studied in the Art Department at the University of Wisconsin where he discovered his passion for typography. Berlow began as a type designer in the 1970’s at a time where analog type was becoming obsolete, putting Berlow at the forefront of the first ever digital type designers.

He applied his passion for typography at several acclaimed foundries such as Linotype and Haas in the late 70’s, but it was in the 80’s where Berlow began making fonts in an entirely new fashion with Linotype. Shortly after this, Berlow was introduced to the Macintosh 2 from Apple where he made he made his first custom digital typeface for Roger Black. When Berlow started Font Bureau, he created a comprehensive guide for his team of designers to ensure the attention to detail that brought Berlow to his mastery of typography. Font Bureau continues to be one of leading foundries for typeface design.

The Font Bureau, Inc. is a digital type foundry started in 1989 by Roger Black and David Berlow, based in Boston, Massachusetts. It is a digital type studio specializing in designing custom typefaces for large publication companies such as The New York Times Magazine, Newsweek, Esquire Magazine, Rolling Stone and the Wall Street Journal .

“I opened up a drawer full of metal type and it sang to me.”

David Berlow TYPEFACE DESIGNER

BUREAU GROT is characterized as a traditional grotesque sans-serif typeface. It consists of folded up letterforms with a strong structure, leaning towards headlines and titles more so than body copy. Bureau Grot is characterized with a moderate to high stroke contrast and a tall x-height accompanied by short ascenders and descenders. The intense contrast and variety in weights makes Bureau Grot one of the most versatile display/headline typefaces on the market.

EAR MIMICS A PRIME MARK

ULTRA WIDE

STANDARD WEIGHT

CONDENSED

ULTRA COMPRESSED

HIGH STROKE CONTRAST VERTICAL STRESS

ELONGATED DROOP INWARD FACING TERMINAL

TAPERED TERMINAL

BERLOW injected the same character from the 19th century British grotesques with aspects such as an elongated droop on the lowercase ‘r’ as well as inward facing terminals that appear on a large portion of characters.

Other distinctive characteristics of Bureau Grot include a tapered terminal that reaches a narrow point on characters such as the lowercase ‘q’ and lowercase ‘b’, and the uppercase ‘G’. The ear on the lowercase ‘g’ is also unique, with a shape similar to a prime mark or apostrophe. These are just a few of the unique characteristics that provide Bureau Grot with the personality it carries throughout digital and print fomats. t