A symbol of our unique city is its city hall, and I remembered once having seen the instruction sheets created by the architectural firm to help and inspire the sign painters when they did the original signs as the building was being furnished. However, these sketches were never turned into a typographical font. As time passed by, when new signs were needed or replacement of old signs was required, other typefaces that did not match the beautiful house were randomly chosen.

In our research, we looked at the typefaces from the functionalist period that must have inspired the work at the architectural studio: Geometric sans serif faces like Paul Renner’s Futura released by Bauer Type Foundry, 1927, Rudolf Koch’s Kabel released by Klingspor Foundry, 1927 and William Addison Dwiggins’s Metro released by the American Mergenthaler Linotype Company, 1929. Metro was, in its first version No.1, a lot less geometric than the abovementioned, but the demand for strict geometric typefaces made it less popular, so in the Metro No.2 released in 1932, the inspiration from the highly geometric Futura was more pronounced.

Although the architectural ideas present in Aarhus City Hall where stylistically cutting edge in 1942, the inspiration for the typeface was a decade old, as the release years above show. That is quite a lot in the most artistically innovative century, but the combination seems in perfect balance.

To celebrate that the City Council had taken the wise decision to revert the name of our city from the “Århus” (using the Danish special letter Å introduced in 1948) to “Aarhus”, we included an AA ligature as a specific feature. 

Aarhus Raadhus font is presently used by the city hall administrations every time new signs are needed, e.g., in the assembly hall after general elections where new members need new signs.