Karsten Luecke Type Foundry

Simple. No-nonsense. Honest. Ein Kerl eben. A good guy. A chap. That’s all there is to say.

Kerl was made for Karl Lagerfeld’s book Chanel’s Russian Connection and subsequently used for covers of books by/on Boris Mikhailov and Alexander Rodchenko. Having rediscovered it more recently, having used it, having realized just how powerful it is as a typographic tool – it transforms words into statements – made me want to include it in the KLTF library so you can enjoy using it, too.

More recently, Kerl put himself on a diet which led to additional lighter weights. But he is too shy to write a book and brag about it:

My favorite use of it? In the catalog Schaut her! designed by Claas Möller.

Download these to learn more about, or to print out and look at, Kerl:

KLTF Kerl Manual

KLTF Typeface Collection

Glyphs

The glyph set found in OTF for Print and in WOFF for Web:

Features

Kerl can change its appearance with help of six stylistic set features. Cyrillic alternates. A historic G and somewhat more spotty K. Plus wider E F H Z, in four steps, which allow spacing out a line – to be used sparingly though.

Since our Kerl was included in the KLTF library in 2019, marking not only Kerl’s 10th birthday but also a short-lived yet much-hyped design school’s 100th birthday, we could not resist celebrating the latter with a handful of additional alternative letterforms:

As to OTF for Print, not all operating systems and applications support OpenType Layout features and kerning equally well, if at all. As to WOFF for Web, only more recent browser versions support OpenType Layout features, via CSS font-feature-settings.