Blackletter

A category of typefaces derived from the formal Gothic scripts of medieval European manuscripts, characterized by dense, angular letterforms with high stroke contrast produced by a flat-nibbed pen held at a consistent angle. Blackletter was the dominant book hand of northern Europe from the twelfth century onward and served as the basis for Gutenberg's first

Movable Type (c. 1440). Its compressed, heavily textured forms distinguish it sharply from the open, rounded letterforms of the

Roman tradition that eventually supplanted it in most of the Western world.