Allegro (typeface)
typeface
Allegro is a serif typeface intended for display use. It was designed by Hans Bohn for the Ludwig & Mayer type foundry of Frankfurt, and released in 1936.
Allegro is inspired by the Didone style dating from around the start of the nineteenth century onwards, that emphasised alternation of very thick and very thin strokes. However, it emphasises this through breaks in the letter where thin strokes would normally be found, producing an effect similar to stencilled lettering, with a slight inclination suggesting handwriting and ball terminals and swashes suggesting music. Allegro is particularly used for decorative purposes, such as on book jackets.
Allegro has been digitised and is sold by Bitstream. Its description of Allegro writes that it blends:
characteristics of roman and italic, fat face and stencil, modern and script.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Allegro (typeface)” is typeface. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Allegro and typeface, not as a finished interpretation.
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Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Mar 12, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q4731411. None of the 1 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1936.
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This entry incorporates text from “Allegro (typeface)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.