Help identifying an early modern Greek sans capitals typeface, possibly by Theodor Paraskevopoulos

[Member RWE…]

TL;DR – If anyone has access to any mid-century Greek type specimens/catalogs, especially those from foundry PAP or by designer Theodor Paraskevopoulos, this can probably be resolved rather quickly, but I haven't been able to find any full specimens yet. Ultimately, I'd like to download/license a version of this typeface, if it's still available.

I've been looking for this typeface for a few weeks and have come up short on a name or original foundry. I've attached all the examples I've been able to find on the internet, in the order I found them:

• Melos Archaion is from a series of CD albums released in the late 1990s by FM Records in Athens. I've reached out, and they are no longer in contact with the graphic designer who worked on the album artwork.
• Grammatike and Neo Methodiko Syntaktiko are both Greek language books published circa 1984 by Smirniotakis, a publishing company. I'm awaiting a response from the publisher.
• Panathenaia is a journal published in 1901. The glyphs are very similar, but noticeably different, so I suspect this type family comes from very early in the history modern Greek type.
• Theodor Paraskevopoulos is the name of a mid-century type designer, grabbed from a thumbnail included in a paper on Greek typography by Themis Mastoridis. I'm awaiting a response from him. Theodor's foundry was called PAP. Here is some info on them and their typefaces, pulled from luc[dot]devroye[dot]org:

Quote

Major Greek type foundry, est. 1956, which reached its peak in the mid 1960s. Part of its 1964 type specimen catalog was republished in Hyphen (vol. 4(1)), 2003. They made 176 different Latin alphabets and even more Greek character sets. It was located in Athens and run by Theod. Paraskevopoulos. There are nice selections of Greek stone-cut style typefaces, script typefaces (Kerkyraika, Olympiaka), modern type (Neukro 1960, Perfekt), Egyptian typefaces, sans typefaces (Korinthiaka, Nettas, Iphigeneias), brush typefaces (Arcadia III), text typefaces (Pelasgika, Elzevir), fun display type (Byzantina, Aiolika Stena, Astoria, Orpheus, Greco 1100B), Western type (Epidaurou), caps display type (Nikes, Olumpic Leuka, Ioulias, Rodiaka, Bersaliana Stena), unicase (Athenaika) and typewriter type (Makedonika Leuka).

Google searches for these font names has not yielded very many results. I can say that the typeface in question is not Olympic Leuka, which is just a Greek variant of Futura and does not feature the uneven A, N, H or lambda that characterize this face.

If someone has access to old Greek type specimens or the above mentioned issue of Hyphen magazine, this may be easy to solve, though I suspect it might be difficult to find the font available for sale.

Thank you,

R.W.

[Member RWE…]

Update: Thanks to a response from Prof. Mastoridis, I have a name [sort of] for the typeface as it existed at Paraskevopoulos' foundry and a copy of their specimen for the 800 and 1100 weights (see below). Unfortunately ΓΚΡΕΚΟ/"Greco" is just a generic term for sans faces that evoke Classical antiquity, so this hasn't gotten me any closer to finding a .ttf/.otf of this one, which I still think must have been digitized at some point due to its use on CD artwork as recently as 1998. Any tips would be much appreciated!

PS – I've reached out to Monotype to see if they have any record of this, and haven't heard back in a few weeks now.

[Member Kev…]

You've already quoted Luc Devroye's excellent website, but he has an additional page on Greek faces in general.

Gerry Leonidas of the University of Reading might be another good source of information (don't know him personally, but seems to be a particular area of interest to him).