My typographer

Information about the font designer Günter Gerhard Lange and his typefaces.
Günter Gerhard Lange was born in Frankfurt-an-der-Oder, Germany, in 1921. His education was interrupted with the outbreak of the second world war when he was called into military service. Only a year later he suffered a serious injury, and the subsequent loss of his leg lead to a medical discharge from the German Army.
In 1941 he embarked on a masters course at the Academy of Graphic Arts and the Book Trade in Leipzig. He studied calligraphy, typesetting, and printing with Professor Georg Belwe, and drawing, etching and lithography with Professor Hans Theo Richter. On completing his course Lange took the position of assistant to Professor Walter Tiemann at the Leipzig Institute. During the early post-war years Lange worked as a freelance artist in Leipzig.
In 1949 he moved to Berlin and enrolled at the University of Pictorial Arts, studying freelance art with Professor Paul Strecker and drawing with Professor Hans Ullman. On graduation on returned to freelance work with his first major client the typeface foundry, Berthold AG. He was promoted to artistic director in 1961 a position which he held until 1990.
He was not only the designer of classic typefaces such as Akzidenz-Grotesk BQ, Berthold Bodoni Old Face BQ, and Imago BQ, but also a communicator and teacher who was an inspiration to many young type designers. After ten years of retirement from his position as Berthold AG's artistic director, Lange has recently resumed his design activities. Digital fonts based on his earlier and recent designs (Bodoni Old Face, Imago, Arena New, Whittingham, and others) are now being offered as part of a "GGL Exklusiv" series by Berthold Types Ltd, Chicago, a successor to H Berthold AG. He died in 2008 at the age of 87.
Berthold is a name long associated with type design. H. Berthold AG was one of the largest and most successful type foundries in the world for most of the modern typographic era. Established in 1858 by Hermann Berthold and based in Berlin, the company played a key role in the introduction of major new typefaces and was a successful player in the development of typesetting machines.
The H. Berthold foundry's most celebrated family of typefaces is arguably Akzidenz-Grotesk (released 1896), an early sans-serif which prefigured by half a century the release of enormously popular neo-grotesque faces such as Helvetica. In 1950, type designer Günter Gerhard Lange embarked upon a long affiliation with the company, for which he designed various original typefaces, including Concorde and Imago, and oversaw the foundry's revivals of classic faces such as Garamond, Caslon, Baskerville, and Bodoni.
Beset by financial troubles, H. Berthold AG ceased operations in 1993. Berthold Types Ltd., a Chicago-based company, one of the companies which claimed to be the copyright owner of Berthold fonts, took over distribution of the Berthold digital type library and has released several new typefaces under the direction of Lange, who had retired in 1990, but now serves as artistic consultant to the new Berthold.