Culture
Words by Michel Wlassikoff
Deberny et Peignot’s “Étoile”, ca 1934
Quick, also known as Trafton Script, and rebranded as Étoile for the French market, was a promising modern and elegant script. It ultimately failed to meet commercial expectations, prompting the development of a more functional script face.
Quick, also known as Trafton Script, and rebranded as Étoile for the French market, was a promising modern and elegant script. It ultimately failed to meet commercial expectations, prompting the development of a more functional script face.
Quick, also known as Trafton Script, named after its author, H. A. Trafton, is published by the Bauer foundry, in Frankfurt, in 1933. Bauer is the company which implemented and developed Futura from 1927. Quick was the subject of the same approach which led the Deberny et Peignot foundry to acquire Futura by renaming it Europe for the French and French-speaking market. The rights to Quick were acquired from Bauer, and Deberny et Peignot proclaimed with a lot of advertisements and specimens the arrival on the market of this new face which was called Étoile.
It is supposed to respond to the demand for a modern script, which is increasing in the register of advertising and city works. Nothing is too beautiful to highlight Étoile, one of the specimens declares: “With its slender and distinguished line, its flexibility of movement, its harmonious shapes and its open look, it will be all the rage everywhere. By introducing this beautiful and charming script into French typography, we are certain that it will play all the roles that require grace, elegance and femininity.”
But Étoile does not achieve the ambitions that govern its French edition. Its lack of success led the foundry to initiate the design of a more functional and more popular script, this would be Scribe, designed by Marcel Jacno and published in 1936.
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