The purpose of the original DIN 1451 standard was to lay down a style of lettering which is timeless and easily legible. Unfortunately, these early letters lacked elegance and were not properly designed for typographic applications. Ever since its first publication in the 1930’s, several type foundries adopted the original designs for digital photocomposition. By early 2000, it became apparent that the existing DIN-based fonts did not fulfill the ever-increasing demand for additional weights as well as support for languages other than Latin.

Parachute® was set out to fill this gap by introducing the PF DIN Text series which has become ever since the most comprehensive and sophisticated set of DIN typefaces. It was based on the original standards but was specifically designed to fit typographic requirements. Its letterforms divert from the stiff geometric structure of the original and introduce instead elements which are familiar, softer and easier to read.

It was completed in 2002 as a group of 3 families which included condensed and compressed versions.

With its vast array of weights, the extended language support, but most of all its meticulous and elaborate design, it has been proven valuable to numerous design agencies. Ever since its first release, it has been used around the world in diverse editorial, packaging, branding and advertising campaigns as well as websites. It was quoted by Publish magazine as being “an overkill series for complex corporate identity projects”.

The whole PF DIN Text type system includes 45 weights from Hairline to Extra Black including true-italics. Additionally, every font in the Pro series is powered by 270 very useful symbols for packaging, environmental graphics, signage, transportation, computing, fabric care.

There are 2 versions to choose from:

The PRO version is the most powerful. All weights support Latin, Cyrillic, Greek, Central/Eastern European, Romanian, Baltic and Turkish, with 20 advanced opentype features including small caps.

The standard STD version is more economic. All weights support Latin, Central/Eastern European, Romanian, Baltic and Turkish, with 18 advanced opentype features including small caps.

In 2010 Parachute® released 4 new families DIN Monospace, DIN Stencil, DIN Text Arabic and DIN Text Universal. All these are complemented by the popular DIN Display version. Altogether the Parachute DIN series is a set of 8 superfamilies with a total of 96 weights.