version 1.0, december 3, 1997
price: $10.00

lower is based on a herbert bayer's universal alphabet--which consists of only lowercase letters cut to geometric forms.

click on any of the font styles to see a preview:
Regular | Bold | Italic | Bold Italic | Tight

about lower and the bauhaus

the bauhaus was a school founded in 1919 by walter gropius at weimar, germany, and later located successively at dessau, berlin, and chicago, to develop a functional architecture based on a correlation between creative design and modern industry and science. the work of the bauhaus to move towards a level of clarity in design and production also directly affected their opinions on typography. germany at this time preferred heavy, complicated, gothic style fonts; known as fracturs. this style had been used traditionally in german printing, but was difficult to read.

the simplicity of san serif designs was an attractive alternative to the bauhuas. herbert bayer, a teacher at the bauhaus, proposed a new system of writing:

"why should we write and print in two alphabets? both a large sign and a small sign are not necessary to identify a single sound. we do not speak in a capital a and a small a. a single alphabet gives us practically the same result as the mixture of upper and lower case letters, and at the same time is less of a burden on all who write." --herbert bayer from bauhaus 1919-1928 p.147

to this end bayer created what he called the "universal alphabet."

my design is an attempt to bring bayer's design into practical use. i am creating a family of fonts that can be used for everyday body copy (i.e., 9-14 pt size type). this family will include regular, bold, italic and bold italic. there is also a narrow font designed for headlines or other special effects. i am creating a multiple master version of lower as well as the general version. this multiple master version would allow you to select exactly the weight you need (from light to black).

feel free to check out the free and demoware fonts are available from my font warehouse.

shareware notice

why pay? well, aside for helping marty pfeiffer go to college, you will get an even greater benefit: full versions of all five lower fonts. that means that you will get five fonts, each containing the whole character set (with upper and lowercase letters, accented characters, special characters and numbers). you will notice that lower demo lacks a full character set and prints out numbers as though they were bitmaps. this is to remind you that you are using a demo version and to encourage you to register. it is my policy to provide free updates of my software for registered users.

paying for my fonts is fairly simple. if you wish to register my fonts online, please choose the appropriate link.

* online registration (secure | insecure)
you can register my fonts, right here, right now!

if you do not wish to register online, follow the instructions below.

open the register program that accompanies my font. enter your name, your email address, and the number of single user licenses you desire for each program you wish to purchase. save or copy or print the data from the register program and send the data and payment to kagi shareware. kagi shareware handles my payment processing.

If paying with credit card or first virtual, you can email or fax the data to kagi shareware. their email address is shareware@kagi.com and their fax number is +1 510 652-6589. you can either copy the data from register and paste into the body of an email message or you can save the data to a file and you can attach that file to an email message. there is no need to compress the data file, it's already pretty small. if you have a fax modem, just print the data to the kagi fax number.

payments sent via email are processed within 3 to 4 days. you will receive an email acknowledgement when it is processed. payments sent via fax take up to 10 days and if you provide a correct internet email address you will receive an email acknowledgement.

If you are paying with cash or us$ check you should print the data using the register application and send it to the address shown on the form, which is:

kagi shareware
1442-a walnut street #392-wm
berkeley, california 94709-1405
usa

distribution info:

if you would like to include lower demo on a cd or upload it to your favorite ftp site, please send me a note. i'm more than happy to allow lower to be distributed through different chanels, i just want to be in the loop :-)

copyright & contact info:

lower is ©1997 martin p. pfeiffer
email: wamozart@kagi.com
web site: www.teleport.com/~wamozart/fonts.html

* comments?
send marty a comment about his fonts.
* font warehouse
go to marty's font warehouse.
* previews of marty's fonts
see some previews of my fonts.