Golzheim

Characteristic

Both families move between light-heartedness, an expressive linear stroke weight, and graphic clarity – a balance between human craftsmanship and typographic precision, between fine hairline pencils and ultra-black markers that merge letter shapes into solid forms. Distinct spurs in the lowercase and the occasional unsteady stroke give both families a sense of constant movement – particularly in the serifs, which thrive on dynamic variety.

While the default shapes stand proud and self-contained, an alternative set with open counters offers a refreshing contrast. Another set with continuous strokes takes the hand-drawn character even further. This makes Golzheim an incredibly versatile foundation, offering designers a rich palette of creative tools.

Origin

The Golzheim type family traces its origins back to the former Golzheim campus of the Düsseldorf University of Applied Sciences, where Gabriel and Jonas, the typeface’s creators, first envisioned a hand-drawn, comic-like Bodoni during their studies – originally for one of Jonas’s comic ideas. One of their goals was to develop a typeface with a small x-height, subtly reflecting the hesitant confidence of the comic’s main character. But all sketches were too caught up in the high-contrast aesthetics of classicism – sometimes you just can’t see the forest for the trees …

The concept, both comic and type, faded as time went by. Nearly a decade later, during a casual conversation, Jonas offhandedly mentioned how he would approach the idea differently today. That was all it took – both felt the spark reignite, and they set out to bring the typeface to life. Shapes were discarded, ideas refined. And with that, Golzheim and Golzheim Sans were born – carrying one more idea within. 

Emojis and More

Over 300 emojis and additional custom characters that extend beyond the official Unicode complete Golzheim – a total of 385 symbols. They are included in all fonts, not separated into a standalone symbol font. The stroke weight increases up to Regular and remains consistent beyond that – resulting in four weights: Hairline, Thin, Light, and Regular. Covering every emoji is almost a lifelong task, but if you’re missing a specific character for your design, just reach out to us!

Golzheim goes beyond standard Unicode by including additional characters that don’t yet have an official encoding. Certain characters are designed for UI use cases, others for storytelling – but all of them expand the creative spectrum. To ensure compatibility across all software, these characters are mapped to the Private Use Area Unicode, making them accessible even in applications without a visual glyph selection panel. ↯ Before buying, please double-check if your software supports Private Use Area character mapping.

The Private Use Area also opens the door for small typographic experiments – like these six scribbled strikethroughs, which can be layered above or below your text. They come in four widths, each available in Hairline, Thin, Light, and Regular – just like the emojis. 

OpenType Features

Both type families feature a wide range of individual stylistic alternate glyphs. Two encompassing sets elevate the letterforms significantly: open counters* and continuous strokes – all corresponding glyphs, such as superscript characters, are included. Additionally, the families offer a variety of other features, including tabular figures, old style figures, slashed zeros, and arrow variants.
*Golzheim Sans features a slightly different Stylistic Set 09. For more details, please refer to the specimen.

Variable Font

The unique weight progression of the Golzheim type family – from hairline to extreme black – offers countless possibilities for visual effects, even with just a few axes. Both type families come as separate variable font, each supporting weight and italic axis. A major advantage of the Variable Font is that the italic angle can be customized to fit specific needs. Combined with weight, this allows for greater nuance in conveying tone and emotion. ↯ Important: Interpolation between serif and grotesque is not supported!

Glyph Order and Preglyphs

All nice to type fonts provide a structured glyph order with special preglyphs for a better overview – just choose ‘CID / GID’ instead of ‘Unicode’ in your Glyphs overview. To save webspace and loading time, webfonts don’t come with preglyphs.

Supported Languages

Afar, Afrikaans, Albanian, Azerbaijani, Basque, Belarusian, Bislama, Bosnian, Breton, Catalan, Chamorro, Chichewa, Comorian, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, Esperanto, Estonian, Faroese, Fijian, Filipino/Tagalog, Finnish, Flemish, French, Gaelic, Gagauz, German, Gikuyu, Gilbertese/Kiribati, Haitian-Creole, Hawaiian, Hungarian, Icelandic, Indonesian, Irish, Italian, Javanese, Kashubian, Kinyarwanda, Kirundi, Latin, Latvian, Lithuanian, Luba/Ciluba/Kasai, Luxembourgish, Malagasy, Malay, Maltese, Maori, Marquesan, Moldovan/Romanian, Montenegrin, Nauruan, Ndebele, Norwegian, Oromo, Palauan/Belauan, Polish, Portuguese, Quechua, Romanian, Romansh, Sami, Samoan, Sango, Serbian, Sesotho, Setswana, Seychellois-Creole, Swazi, Silesian, Slovak, Slovenian, Somali, Sorbian, Sotho, Spanish, Swahili, Swedish, Tahitian, Tetum, Tok-Pisin, Tongan, Tsonga, Tswana, Turkish, Turkmen, Tuvaluan, Uzbek, Wallisian, Walloon, Welsh, Xhosa, Zulu

Trials

nice to type trials come with a reduced character set in two formats: PostScript flavoured OpenType Fonts (.otf) and WOFF2 (.woff2) for web use. nice to type’s unique preglyphs are also included – please have a look above. Depending on the typeface, a few OpenType might be supported, such as alternate letter shapes.

Typeface Golzheim & Golzheim Sans
Designed by Gabriel Richter and Jonas Schneider
Spacing and Kerning by Igino Marini
Published in 2025
Fontproduction by Christoph Koeberlin
Illustrations by Jonas Schneider

Golzheim & Golzheim Sans are a trademark of nice to type
Copyright © 2025 by nice to type – Gabriel Richter. All rights reserved.