Verlag, the affable Modernist.

From out of the six typefaces originally created for the Guggenheim Museum comes Verlag, a family of 30 sans serifs that brings a welcome eloquence to the can-do sensibility of pre-war Modernism.

Originally envisioned as a riff on the Guggenheim’s iconic Art Deco lettering, Verlag developed into its own family of versatile typefaces in order to suit the needs of a modern identity program. Because the fonts would ultimately represent a range of individual artistic voices — from Cézanne to Kandinsky to Matthew Barney — Verlag was carefully planned so that its distinct personality would be checked by a sense of objectivity.

From the rationalist geometric designs of the Bauhaus school, such as Futura (1927) and Erbar (1929), Verlag gets its crispness and its meticulous planning. Verlag’s “fairminded” quality is rooted in the newsier sans serifs designed for linecasting machines, such as Ludlow Tempo and Intertype Vogue (both 1930), both staples of the Midwestern newsroom for much of the century. But unlike any of its forbears, Verlag includes a comprehensive and complete range of styles: five weights, each in three different widths, each including the often-neglected companion italic.