Despite the fact that over the years several designers have manually created stencil lettering based on DIN for various projects, there has never been a professional digital stencil version of a DIN-based typeface.

After the successful introduction of DIN Monospace a few months earlier, PF DIN Stencil now completes Parachute’s extensive library of DIN superfamilies. It was based on its original counterpart DIN Text Pro and was particularly designed to address contemporary projects, by incorporating elements and weights which are akin to industries such as fashion, music, video, architecture, sports and communications.

Traditionally, stencils have been used extensively for military equipment, goods packaging, transportation, shop signs, seed sacks and prison uniforms. In the old days, stencilled markings of ownership were printed on personal possessions, while stencilled signatures on shirts were typical of 19th century stencilling.

Two companies dominated the market in the mid-twentieth century: the Marsh Stencil Machine Company in the United States and the Sächsische Metall Schablonen Fabrik in Germany. Ever since the late 1930s, it was the German Sächsische Metall Schablonen Fabrik which used heavily the new DIN 1451 standard font (introduced in 1936), attempting to overthrow the reign of the Didot-style modern roman which was at the time the most common stencil letter in Germany. These letters were manufactured mainly as individual zinc stencils which could be ordered in sizes between 10 and 100mm.

The DIN Stencil family manages to preserve several traditional stencil features, but introduces additional modernities which enhance its pleasing characteristics and make it an ideal choice for a large number of contemporary projects. Furthermore, the spacing attributes of the glyphs were redefined and legibility was improved by revising the shape of the letterforms. The DIN Stencil family consists of 8 diverse weights from the elegant Hairline to the muscular Black. Currently, it supports Latin, Eastern European, Turkish and Baltic.