Grotesque, or Grotesk in Germany, is a style of sans-serif typeface from the 19th century. The name was coined by William Thorowgood, the first person to produce a sans-serif type with lower case, in 1832. Capital-only faces of this style were first available from 1816, made by William Caslon IV of the Caslon foundry under the name 2 Line English Egyptian.
Examples of Grotesque designs are:
- Akzidenz Grotesk (1896)
- Franklin Gothic (1905), Morris Fuller Benton
- Monotype Grotesque (1926) by F.H. Pierpont
- Univers (1957), Adrian Frutiger
- Helvetica (1957), Max Miedinger, based on Akzidenz Grotesk
Later designs are sometimes classified as neo-grotesque.
Famous quotes containing the word grotesque:
“I have found that anything that comes out of the South is going to be called grotesque by the Northern reader, unless it is grotesque, in which case it is going to be called realistic.”
—Flannery O’Connor (1925–1964)