Bandit

Bandit’s “famiglia” includes Pierre Gauchat, Max Bill and Max Miedinger. In the 1930s, Gauchat developed a lettering style for one of his main clients, the Swiss furniture company Embru,¹ which has produced now-classic pieces by Alvar Aalto, Marcel Breuer and Flora Steiger-Crawford. More mundanely, virtually everyone in Switzerland has used their trousers on the company’s furniture for schools, municipal halls or canteens. Another grandfather of Swiss design, Max Bill not only used condensed slab typefaces early on² but also developed his own letterings, for instance in the “Wohnausstellung Neubühl”³ poster which is linked with the “Neues Bauen” architectural movement. Bill’s soft spot for wood type as well as his original modular letterings were particularly influential for the development of Bandit. Lastly, Miedinger’s Pro Arte⁴ is a slightly younger forebear. The 1950s typeface is an inverted slab serif of the genre known as “Italienne” which looks like a more constructed version of Robert Harling’s Playbill.⁵ Its combination of geometric and modular shapes is also to be found in Bandit’s DNA. These Swiss origins were observed through an American lens which coloured their appearance. As a result, Bandit is a modern, cross-continental typeface which will leave its mark wherever it is used.

1     Embru Logo, Pierre Gauchat, 1930
2    Verkaufsaustellung Poster, Max Bill, 1931
3    Neubühl Poster, Max Bill, 1931
4    Pro Arte, Max Miedinger, Haas’sche Schriftgiesserei, 1954
5    Playbill, Robert Harling, Stephenson Blake, 1938