Named to honor the then-new trans-Atlantic cable, ITC Kabel® was designed by German typographer Rudolph Koch for the Klingspor foundry, which released it in 1927. At the time, many of the major type foundries in Europe were developing new sans serif typefaces, and the challenge faced by each was the development of the new typeface without duplicating either their own earlier work or the new work of competing foundries.
Koch’s work in developing Kabel was influenced by the work of his contemporary Jakob Erbar, but an examination of Kabel reveals many other influences as well, in particular Koch’s own background in calligraphy. While the bowls are nearly perfectly geometric, Koch’s personality comes through in the fanciful lower-case g, the angular stroke-ends and the splayed W, all of which combine to make the typeface decidedly less formal and staid than its contemporaries such as Futura®.
ITC’s 1975 revival of Kabel, designed by Victor Caruso, made several changes to Koch’s original design, the most significant of which increased the x-heights across-the-board. The overall effect of these changes was to make the typeface more legible, a feature demanded by many different media interests, especially advertising.
References:
http://typophile.com/node/13674
http://www.identifont.com/find?similar=ITC+Kabel&q=Go
