Impact (typeface)

Lee was an advertising design director and designed Impact with posters and publicity material in mind.{{cite web|title=Geoffrey Lee|url=http://www.identifont.com/show?1KY|website=Identifont|access-date=22 August 2015}} Its thick strokes, compressed letterspacing, and minimal interior counterform are specifically aimed, as its name suggests, to "have an impact". Impact has a high x-height, reaching nearly to three-quarters the capital line. Ascenders are short, and descenders even shorter. With narrow apertures and folded-up letterforms, the lower-case can be quite hard to read printed small, especially for people with vision problems. The face is intended for headlines and display use rather than body text. As a display design, it was not released with an italic or bold weight.

During the 1960s, there was a trend towards condensed, bold, "industrial" sans-serifs like Schmalfette Grotesk and Compacta, largely pioneered by West German magazine Twen,{{The Visual History of Type|372–373}} and Impact was intended to fit this trend.{{cite web|last1=Mosley|first1=James|author-link=James Mosley|title=The Nymph and the Grot, an update|url=http://typefoundry.blogspot.co.uk/2007/01/nymph-and-grot-update.html|website=Type Foundry (blog)|access-date=6 March 2016}} Writing in 2004, the year before his death, Lee explained that the design goal was "to get as much ink on paper as possible in a given size with the maximum possible x-height" and to provide a home-grown metal type alternative to European designs in the style (e.g. Schmalfette Grotesk, illustrated in Lettera, a contemporary anthology series of lettering), which were complicated for British businesses to license and use.{{cite web|last1=Lee |first1=Geoffrey |title=Comments on Typophile thread |url=http://typophile.com/node/7921 |website=Typophile (archived) |access-date=27 October 2014 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20050826182110/http://typophile.com/node/7921 |archive-date=August 26, 2005 }}{{cite web|last1=Dempsey|first1=Mike|title=Schmalfette: Tall, dark and handsome|url=http://mikedempsey.typepad.com/graphic_journey_blog/2013/04/schmalfette-tall-dark-and-handsome.html|website=Graphic Journey|access-date=22 August 2015}}{{cite web|last1=Dempsey|first1=Mike|title=Frederick Lambert: Graphic Design Britain|url=http://mikedempsey.typepad.com/graphic_journey_blog/2010/12/fredrick-lambert.html|website=Design Journey|access-date=22 August 2015}}{{cite web|last1=Dempsey|first1=Mike|title=Blast from the past|url=http://mikedempsey.typepad.com/graphic_journey_blog/2014/06/blast-from-a-distant-graphic-past.html|website=Design Journey|access-date=23 August 2015}} Lee wrote that "many of us admired the vitality and colour of what we knew only as Schmalfette, and used it by old-fashioned cut and paste. Use was limited as it was never made in metal as far as I know, and existed then in capitals and numerals only". (Schmalfette Grotesk was later digitised, with an added lower-case, as Haettenschweiler by Eraman Ltd.{{cite web|title=Haettenschweiler font information|url=https://www.microsoft.com/typography/fonts/family.aspx?FID=30|publisher=Microsoft|access-date=22 August 2015}}) Other designs along the same lines from around the same period included the Letraset face Compacta, Matthew Carter's slightly earlier masthead of Private Eye (which is caps-only but based on a never-released typeface with a lower case),{{cite web|last1=Carter|first1=Matthew|title=Carter's Battered Stat|url=http://www.eyemagazine.com/feature/article/carters-battered-stat|website=Eye|access-date=5 February 2016}}{{cite web|last1=Walters|first1=John|title=Matthew Carter's timeless typographic masthead for Private Eye magazine|url=http://www.eyemagazine.com/blog/post/type-tuesday26|website=Eye|access-date=24 August 2015}} and the phototypesetting Helvetica Compressed, also by Carter and released a few years later.{{cite web|last1=Sherman|first1=Nick|last2=Carter|first2=Matthew|title=Helvetica Compressed|url=https://www.flickr.com/photos/nicksherman/16656369014/in/photolist-rnSfd7-7pDNRB-3yHxz-2a1L5E-78Bq7N-5CTt6h|website=Flickr|access-date=30 April 2018|quote=Helvetica Compressed was planned as a three-part family [to fit into] the Linofilm’s unit system…I designed Helvetica Compressed and Helvetica Extra Compressed, on my own before Hans-Jürg joined the company. They were released in 1966. Hans-Jürg designed the Ultra Compressed under my eye. It was released in 1968…part of a craze for condensed grots in Europe in the ’60s that encouraged me to propose to Mike Parker that I should design a series when I joined Merg[enthaler] in 1965. There was no client in mind for Helvetica Compressed when we did it.}}{{cite book|last1=Drucker|first1=Margaret Re; essays by Johanna|last2=Mosley|first2=James|title=Typographically Speaking: The Art of Matthew Carter|date=2003|publisher=Princeton Architectural|location=New York|isbn=9781568984278|pages=41, 53 etc.|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=WqXd_w4S4SsC&pg=PA41|edition= 2.}}

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File:Impact brochure page 1.jpg

Released at the end of the age of metal type as phototypesetting gained popularity, it was one of Stephenson Blake's last typefaces released in metal.{{cite journal|last1=Firth|first1=Rob|title=Stephenson, Blake Today|journal=Small Printer Magazine, British Printing Society|url=http://britishletterpress.co.uk/type-and-typography/type-founders/stephenson-blake/stephenson-blake-today/|access-date=22 August 2015}}

The design rights were acquired by Monotype, which ultimately licensed the design to Microsoft as part of a package of fonts for use with Windows in the 1980s and 1990s.{{cite web|last1=McDonald|first1=Rob|title=Some history about Arial|url=http://www.paulshawletterdesign.com/2011/09/blue-pencil-no-18%E2%80%94some-history-about-arial/|website=Paul Shaw Letter Design|access-date=22 May 2015}}{{cite web|last1=Shaw|first1=Paul|title=Arial Addendum no. 3|url=http://www.paulshawletterdesign.com/2011/10/blue-pencil-no-18%E2%80%94arial-addendum-no-3/|website=Blue Pencil|access-date=1 July 2015}}{{cite web|last1=Shaw (& Nicholas)|title=Arial addendum no. 4|url=http://www.paulshawletterdesign.com/2011/11/blue-pencil-no-18%E2%80%94arial-addendum-no-4/|website=Blue Pencil|access-date=1 July 2015}}

The original design contained wider alternate forms for the letters 'J' and 'r', intended for letter positions at the start and end of words, which have generally not been included in digitisations.{{cite web|title=Impact poster|url=http://impact.idesignandwrite.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/StephensonBlakeImpact2.jpg|archive-url=https://archive.today/20141227214918/http://impact.idesignandwrite.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/StephensonBlakeImpact2.jpg|url-status=usurped|archive-date=27 December 2014|publisher=Stephenson Blake|access-date=27 December 2014}} The common digitisation also simplifies the design somewhat, omitting the subtle bevelling of tittles on 'i' and 'j' and flared stroke ends seen on the original metal type release. An eccentricity preserved in the digitisation is the ampersand, which is only as high as the x-height, not the cap height.

Lee digitised and self-released a variant, Impact Wide, in 2002 for online sale. This release includes the alternate characters and an italic style.{{cite web | last1=Lee | first1=Geoffrey | title=Impact Wide | url=https://www.myfonts.com/fonts/geoffreylee/impact-wide/ | publisher=MyFonts | access-date=27 October 2014}}

In July 2010, Ascender Corp introduced Impact 2010, an enhanced version with additional OpenType typographic features designed by Terrance Weinzierl and Steve Matteson. These included quirky interlocking characters, text figures and proportional and tabular figures.{{cite web|title=Ascender 2010 font pack|url=https://ww1.prweb.com/prfiles/2010/06/29/91042/UserGuideAscender2010FontPack.pdf|website=PRWeb|publisher=Ascender|access-date=29 July 2015}}{{cite web|url=http://www.prweb.com/releases/2010/07/prweb4208244.htm |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100709181403/http://www.prweb.com/releases/2010/07/prweb4208244.htm |url-status=dead |archive-date=9 July 2010 |title=Ascender Releases New OpenType Font Pack for Microsoft Office 2010 |publisher=Prweb.com |date=2010-07-06 |access-date=2011-05-26}}

• Compacta
• Haettenschweiler

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• Original Impact brochure "The Impact of Impact": pages [https://web.archive.org/web/20050115144633/http://www.typophile.com/forums/messages/30/__Svr-l901_Redirected_My_Documents_geraintf_My_Pictures_impact4-55632.pdf 1], [https://web.archive.org/web/20051109171017/http://www.typophile.com/forums/messages/30/__Svr-l901_Redirected_My_Documents_geraintf_My_Pictures_impact3-55629.pdf 2], [https://web.archive.org/web/20050115160115/http://www.typophile.com/forums/messages/30/__Svr-l901_Redirected_My_Documents_geraintf_My_Pictures_impact2-55626.pdf 3], [https://web.archive.org/web/20050115181634/http://www.typophile.com/forums/messages/30/__Svr-l901_Redirected_My_Documents_geraintf_My_Pictures_impact1-55622.pdf 4]

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Category:Grotesque sans-serif typefaces

Category:Neo-grotesque sans-serif typefaces

Category:Windows XP typefaces

Category:Typefaces and fonts introduced in 1965

Category:Display typefaces

Category:Stephenson Blake typefaces

Category:Internet memes