Squared sans used on Nostalghia poster

Question

And on the topic of these kinds of sans, can anyone give me a term for them? Or a genealogy? I have always been interested in them but been unable to find anything worthwhile about them online.

Answer 1

Blender Strong.

I guess you could call it modular/gridded/angular, and it could even be linked to the "gas pipe" style of lettering taught in sign painting manuals of the late 19th and early 20th century. Lettering templates used by draftspeople, architects, and engineers would be another source for similar digital typefaces.

From the foundry:

Blending in linguistics means mixing parts, also called morphemes, the smallest meaningful units in terms of form and content. The smallest units in the ‘Blender’ font are defined segments resulting from blending and synthesizing two font sketches, based on an a early CAD type and the ‘Regular’ font defined in its basic features by Norm (Dimitri Bruni, Manuel Krebs). Segments were cut from these generated hybrid forms that were re-assembled, recombined as new characters over its underlying strict construction grid. In the first half of the 20th century, many designers were engaged in the construction of modular fonts in which geometric parts and an underlying grid produced the letterforms. The Blender typeface follows this rational principle but retains a reticently soft at once technical look in its formal manifestation.

Comments

While the foundry doesn't mention it, it's hard to imagine Blender wasn't inspired by Wim Crouwel's Gridnik.

Besides the elements described above, you may be responding to the diagonal corners on round shapes. Type with this characteristic is sometimes called “octagonal”, referring to an ‘O’ made with eight line segments. See the list of related typefaces on that Gridnik page for more examples. 

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Good point about Gridnik, Stewf. Could "chamfered" also be used to describe this style?

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Yes, although those designs are usually more square with diagonally cut corners rather than having a longer diagonal stroke created a rounder shape. See Chamfer Condensed. 

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Great, much obliged! I also see similarities with the Charles Wright font used on UK number plates and also Ed Ruscha's Boy Scout Utility Modern and a few others. Plus I remember seeing similar style typefaces used in rural America in the mid 20th century on water towers and the like. Not sure what influenced what or if they all developed indepently of each other. Anyways, it's an intersting genre of type. Cheers for your help!