What is the URW Grotesk™ font?

URW Grotesk was designed exclusively for URW by Prof. Hermann Zapf in 1985. At the same time, Zapf designed URW Antiqua to go with URW Grotesk. At that time, we were working with a large German publishing house (Axel Springer) on type design solutions to replace certain of their newspaper fonts. Test pages of large German newspapers (e.g. Bildzeitung) were printed with URW Grotesk and URW Antiqua font families. For reasons not disclosed to us, the project was dropped and Springer never used URW Grotesk and URW Antiqua for that purpose. Anyway, Zapf finished his designs and URW produced both families. More… Zapf’s intention for the two typefaces was to design two highly legible, open and classical fonts that could be used for any kind of typography, especially books, newspapers, magazines, etc. However, we realized later on, that URW Grotesk is very well suited for multi media applications on screen.

URW Grotesk™ Font families

The URW Grotesk™ includes the following font families:

• URW Grotesk ExtraLight
• URW Grotesk ExtraLight Oblique
• URW Grotesk Light
• URW Grotesk SC Light
• URW Grotesk Light Oblique
• URW Grotesk Light Italic
• URW Grotesk Regular
• URW Grotesk SC Regular
• URW Grotesk Oblique
• URW Grotesk Italic
• URW Grotesk Medium
• URW Grotesk Medium Oblique
• URW Grotesk Medium Italic
• URW Grotesk Bold
• URW Grotesk Bold Oblique
• URW Grotesk Bold Italic
• URW Grotesk Cond Light
• URW Grotesk Cond Bold
• URW Grotesk ExtraNarrow ExtraLight
• URW Grotesk ExtraNarrow ExtraLight Oblique
• URW Grotesk ExtraNarrow Light
• URW Grotesk ExtraNarrow Light Oblique
• URW Grotesk ExtraNarrow Regular
• URW Grotesk ExtraNarrow Oblique
• URW Grotesk ExtraNarrow Medium
• URW Grotesk ExtraNarrow Medium Oblique
• URW Grotesk ExtraNarrow Bold
• URW Grotesk ExtraNarrow Bold Oblique
• URW Grotesk Narrow ExtraLight
• URW Grotesk Narrow ExtraLight Oblique
• URW Grotesk Narrow Light
• URW Grotesk Narrow Light Oblique
• URW Grotesk Narrow Regular
• URW Grotesk Narrow Oblique
• URW Grotesk Narrow Medium
• URW Grotesk Narrow Medium Oblique
• URW Grotesk Narrow Bold
• URW Grotesk Narrow Bold Oblique
• URW Grotesk Wide ExtraLight
• URW Grotesk Wide ExtraLight Oblique
• URW Grotesk Wide Light
• URW Grotesk Wide Light Oblique
• URW Grotesk Wide Regular
• URW Grotesk Wide Oblique
• URW Grotesk Wide Medium
• URW Grotesk Wide Medium Oblique
• URW Grotesk Wide Bold
• URW Grotesk Wide Bold Oblique
• URW Grotesk ExtraWide ExtraLight
• URW Grotesk ExtraWide ExtraLight Oblique
• URW Grotesk ExtraWide Light
• URW Grotesk ExtraWide Light Oblique
• URW Grotesk ExtraWide Regular
• URW Grotesk ExtraWide Oblique
• URW Grotesk ExtraWide Medium
• URW Grotesk ExtraWide Medium Oblique
• URW Grotesk ExtraWide Bold
• URW Grotesk ExtraWide Bold Oblique

URW Grotesk™ Preview

Here is a preview of how URW Grotesk™ will look. For more previews using your own text as an example, click here.