) Other designs along the same lines from around the same period included the Letraset face Compacta, Matthew Carter's slightly earlier masthead of Private Eye (which is caps-only but based on a never-released typeface with a lower case), and the phototypesetting Helvetica Compressed, also by Carter and released a few years later. (Schmalfette Grotesk was later digitised, with an added lower-case, as Haettenschweiler by Eraman Ltd. Use was limited as it was never made in metal as far as I know, and existed then in capitals and numerals only". Lee wrote that "many of us admired the vitality and colour of what we knew only as Schmalfette, and used it by old-fashioned cut and paste.
Schmalfette Grotesk, illustrated in Lettera, a contemporary anthology series of lettering), which were complicated for British businesses to license and use. Writing in 2004, the year before his death, Lee explained that the design goal was "to get as much ink on paper as possible in a given size with the maximum possible x-height" and to provide a home-grown metal type alternative to European designs in the style (e.g. As a display design, it was not released with an italic or bold weight.ĭuring the 1960s, there was a trend towards condensed, bold, "industrial" sans-serifs like Schmalfette Grotesk and Compacta, largely pioneered by West German magazine Twen, and Impact was intended to fit this trend. The face is intended for headlines and display use rather than body text. With narrow apertures and folded-up letterforms, the lower-case can be quite hard to read printed small, especially for people with vision problems. Ascenders are short, and descenders even shorter. Impact has a high x-height, reaching nearly to three-quarters the capital line. Its thick strokes, compressed letterspacing, and minimal interior counterform are specifically aimed, as its name suggests, to "have an impact". Lee was an advertising design director and designed Impact with posters and publicity material in mind.