Wedge – Bruce Rotherham
Wedge Bold
The typeface used for this issue of The National Grid was designed by Bruce Rotherham. The study for the face, named Wedge began in 1947 while Bruce was an undergraduate student at the University of Auckland School of Architecture.
Rotherham was provoked by Herbert Bayer's 1927 'universal alphabet'. He greatly admired the alphabet's pure geometry, but considered it virtually unreadable when used to set text. As a response he began to develop a typeface that was as elementary as Bayer's but would be as readable as traditional book faces.
In 1958 Monotype Corporation recommended after several trial paragraphs that Wedge had a number of weaknesses in key letter groups. The company recommended that the project be set-aside for a few years so the remaining design problems could be worked through.
Rotherham practiced architecture in New Zealand (as a founding member of the Group) and then in Great Britain for thirty years before by chance, he heard a BBC radio show 'Science Now' discussing the topic of computer type setting. Realising that Wedge was still a relevant project he contacted the item producer Adrian Pickering at the University of Southampton. Some ten years later Wedge was available for use, as seen on these pages.
— Adam Sheffield