Paul Renner

Who was Paul Renner?

Paul Renner was a typeface designer. In 1927, he designed the Futura typeface, which became one of the most successful and most-used types of the 20th century. He was born in Wernigerode, Germany and died in Hödingen.

He had a strict Protestant upbringing, being educated in a 19th-century Gymnasium. He was brought up to have a very German sense of leadership, of duty and responsibility. He was suspicious of abstract art and disliked many forms of modern culture, such as jazz, cinema, and dancing. But equally, he admired the functionalist strain in modernism. Thus, Renner can be seen as a bridge between the traditional and the modern. He attempted to fuse the Gothic and the roman typefaces.

Renner was a prominent member of the Deutscher Werkbund. Two of his major texts are Typografie als Kunst and Die Kunst der Typographie. He created a new set of guidelines for good book design and invented the popular Futura, a geometric sans-serif font used by many typographers throughout the 20th century and today.