Designed in 1908 by H. Hoffmann for the Berthold typefoundry, Block Berthold was one of the tried-and-true typefaces for job printing in Germany well into the 1960s, when phototypesetting was introduced. Block Berthold simplified the setting of justified display lines with a system of capital and lowercase letters of varying widths that allowed the compositor to use more extended lowercase letters to fill out short lines. It was revitalized for the Berthold foundry in the 1970s, with new weights and italics added for versatility.
