Designed from scratch, Telex fonts appear familiar but have individual proportions that do not relate to any existing typeface. Thus they express a unique rhythm and ratio. Telex capital letters are designed just a hint bolder than the lowercase, to emphasize new sentences. This supports reading of entire paragraphs. Regular numerals are drawn notably smaller than regular capital letters, separating these better in letter-numeric systems, i.e. HO 50. Its mid caps (numerals height) and small caps (lowercase height), along with the old-style figures fit well into the proportions and offer the typographer a welcomed enrichment. The mid caps choosing the stylistic set 1 (ss01) are also available to pair with lowercase letters, resulting in new proportions in capitals with lowercase. These supplementary characters offer an aesthetically better fit of capitalized words and figure strings within a text paragraph.

Letter spacing, part of font design, is important for the look-and-feel of a font. In cumulative effect with the letter punches (inner forms) this is what we actually read. Telex’ default spacing compared to most other faces is rather wide – splendid for reading. For well balanced typesetting kerning pairs are included. Still a proportional typeface, especially the thin cuts appear considerably condensed and a tad ‘monospaced’, settled and rational. The Telex font superfamily consists of the six completive styles Modern, Slab, Roundslab, Serif, Sans and Italic in six weights each: Thin, ExtraLight, Light, Regular, SemiBold, Bold.

The name Telex derives from the historical instant text messaging system in the 20th century. Telex machines were – and still are – used to transmit coded information from sender to recipient – quite like the telephone for audio messages. With Telex machines, news is mostly printed in typewriter-like manner, simple and rational in style. In the memento of this piece of communication history keep these fonts the name Telex alive.

The formation

The first cut realized was Telex-Modern SemiBold. This laid out the basic values of the aspired vertical and horizontal strokes. Thinning out the vertical strokes to be well balanced out with the thin horizontal ones, the Thin cut came to existence. This step also defined the pursued narrowing of the width while the spacing between characters slightly increased. The additional Telex-Modern ExtraLight, Light and Regular hold the known horizontal stroke weight. To gain a Bold cut, the horizontal strokes of the SemiBold became bolder to the point where the letters seemed well balanced out in the strokes contrast - unusual for a modern style typeface, but an increase of stroke contrast was not aimed.

The follow up to Telex-Modern became Telex-Slab. Altering some details of glyphs compared to Telex-Modern, the six designed weights feature well balanced stroke weight proportions. Telex-Roundslab is Telex-Slab’ variation with a softer impression.

The design of Telex-Serif is referring more to traditional reading typefaces. Its stroke contrast is between Telex-Modern and Telex-Slab. The serifs remember those of transitional style typefaces. Glyphs were redesigned and show a slight backwards slanted angle of the vertical axis in round elements.

The variation without serifs became the next step, called Telex-Sans. This group has the same balanced out stroke weight proportions as Telex-Slab.

An individual design, though appropriate to all prior existing Telex fonts, Italic was now created. Telex-Italic features details referring to the upright variety but remains inimitable. Uppercase letters slant at 9°, while lowercase appears with a slant of 11°.

Telex fonts are available as smart fonts with OpenType features: alternative mid caps in stylistic set 01 (ss01), small caps, aligning and non aligning figures.