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Altona
Boldly constructed from Hamburg’s unconventional, charming street signs. Delicately engineered with an unpolished charm.
Fischkopp

With proud roots in Hamburg, Altona is a bold, distinctive and cosmopolitan display typeface inspired by the original street signs of the Altona district.

Altona is a bold character – clearly constructed, yet unconventionally playful. Delicately engineered with an unpolished charm, Altona is a display typeface with perfect craftsmanship and a mind of its own.

At the end of the 1920s, constructivism was in vogue. Contemporary typefaces and lettering not only reflected the familiar, they used geometry to explore new forms. Reflecting a desire for renewal and a prelude to modernism, they were a perfect fit for the generous social housing plans of the growing and modernising Hamburg district of Altona.

An interpretation of the district’s street signs, Altona’s defined by its angular counters, the slightly curved vertical serifs in letters like C, the distinctive leg in the k, and its stubborn t. The absence of diagonals and the emphasis on verticals in letters such as M, W, X, and Y also make Altona particularly distinctive.

Altona’s extensive set of 160 icons are also inspired by Hamburg’s district, and 60 of them directly relate to its history. They illustrate the city’s famous landmarks, different types of ships and means of transport, and offer a range of maritime and Hanseatic symbols, such as a Franzbrötchen.

Altona is robustly drawn and adaptable to all media. Whether a three-dimensional shop sign milled in metal, a metropolitan history museum or a future-facing engineering officer: Altona is the typeface for anyone who wants to stand out from the crowd with an unmistakable charm.

Altona offers the full range of tools for typographic refinement: small caps, circled and subscript figures, superscripts and extensive support for languages using the Latin alphabet.
For expressive headlines, Stylistic Set 02 adds decorative strokes to uppercase letters and lowercase k. Together with other alternates, the round A, square i-dots, or the stacked ‘nut’ fractions of Stylistic Set 10, Altona is extremely versatile.

It remains to be seen whether the Altona will be a fishy or a freshwater captain, but it’s clear that its contrast creates a striking effect at large sizes. Altona’s characteristic shapes and stubbornness are continued in the Didone typeface Alison Text.

Designed by
Albert-Jan Pool, Julia Uplegger, Antonia Cornelius
in 2024
Specs
Providing 5 weights, more than 1,200 glyphs per font
Formats
otf and ttf for desktop and apps, plus woff and woff2 for web
Tags
SerifRegularHeadlinesPublishingLatinExpressiveElegantVariable FontSmall CapsAlternatesLigaturesIcons
Related Typefaces
Alison Head, Alison Text, Dockland

Styles

  • Light
  • Regular
  • Medium
  • Bold
  • Black
Character Set
Language Support
Supports more than 200 Languages: Abenaki, Afaan Oromo, Afar, Afrikaans, Albanian, Alsatian, Amis, Anuta, Aragonese, Aranese, Aromanian, Arrernte, Arvanitic, Asturian, Atayal, Aymara, Azerbaijani, Bashkir, Basque, Belarusian, Bemba, Bikol, Bislama, Bosnian, Breton, Cape Verdean Creole, Catalan, Cebuano, Chamorro, Chavacano, Chichewa, Chickasaw, Cimbrian, Cofán, Cornish, Corsican, Creek, Crimean Tatar, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dawan, Delaware, Dholuo, Drehu, Dutch, English, Esperanto, Estonian, Faroese, Fijian, Filipino, Finnish, Folkspraak, French, Frisian, Friulian, Gagauz , Galician, Ganda, Genoese, German, Gikuyu, Gooniyandi, Greenlandic, Guadeloupean Creole, Gwich’in, Haitian Creole, Hän, Hawaiian, Hiligaynon, Hopi, Hotcąk, Hungarian, Icelandic, Ido, Igbo, Ilocano, Indonesian, Interglossa, Interlingua, Irish, Istro-Romanian, Italian, Jamaican, Javanese, Jèrriais, Kaingang, Kala Lagaw Ya, Kapampangan, Kaqchikel, Karakalpak, Karelian, Kashubian, Kikongo, Kinyarwanda, Kiribati, Kirundi, Klingon, Kurdish, Ladin, Latin, Latino sine Flexione, Latvian, Lithuanian, Lojban, Lombard, Low Saxon, Luxembourgish, Maasai, Makhuwa, Malay, Maltese, Manx, Māori, Marquesan, Megleno-Romanian, Meriam Mir, Mirandese, Mohawk, Moldovan, Montagnais, Montenegrin, Murrinh-Patha, Nagamese Creole, Nahuatl, Ndebele, Neapolitan, Ngiyambaa, Niuean, Noongar, Norwegian, Novial, Occidental, Occitan, Oshiwambo, Ossetian, Palauan, Papiamento, Piedmontese, Polish, Portuguese, Potawatomi, Q’eqchi’, Quechua, Rarotongan, Romanian, Romansh, Rotokas, Sami Inari , Sami Lule, Sami Northern, Sami Southern, Samoan, Sango, Saramaccan, Sardinian, Scottish Gaelic, Serbian, Seri, Seychellois Creole, Shawnee, Shona, Sicilian, Silesian, Slovak, Slovenian, Slovio, Somali, Sorbian (Lower, Upper), Sotho (Northern, Southern), Spanish, Sranan, Sundanese, Swahili, Swazi, Swedish, Tagalog, Tahitian, Tetum, Tok Pisin, Tokelauan, Tongan, Tshiluba, Tsonga, Tswana, Tumbuka, Turkish, Turkmen, Tuvaluan, Tzotzil, Uzbek, Venetian, Vepsian, Volapük, Võro, Wallisian, Walloon, Waray-Waray, Warlpiri, Wayuu, Welsh, Wik-Mungkan, Wiradjuri, Wolof, Xavante, Xhosa, Yapese, Yindjibarndi, Zapotec, Zarma, Zazaki, Zulu, Zuni
OpenType Features
All OpenType Features included: Access All Alternates, Caps to Small Caps, Case Sensitive, Contextual Alternates, Denominator, Discretionary Ligatures, Fractions, Glyph Composition/Decomposition, Kerning, Ligatures, Lining Figures, Localized Forms, Mark to Mark Positioning, Numerators, Old style Figures, Ordinals, Proportional Figures, Scientific Inferiors, Slashed Zero, Small Capitals, Stylistic Alternates, Stylistic Set: Alternate Ampersand, Stylistic Set: Circled Numbers, Stylistic Set: Connecting Accents, Stylistic Set: Curly Question Mark, Stylistic Set: Decorative Characters, Stylistic Set: German Capital Sharp S, Stylistic Set: Negative Circled Numbers, Stylistic Set: Round A, Stylistic Set: Signpainter’s Ampersand, Stylistic Set: Stacked Fractions, Stylistic Set: Straight i-Dot, Stylistic Set: Tabular Punctuation, Subscript, Superscript, Tabular Figures
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In-Use & Articles

A New Awakening with Altona and Alison
Making Of Altona and Alison

Albert-Jan Pool at Typostammtisch in Hamburg, 1st of February 2024

Altona & Alison Page 2023 06