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Looking for the rare full version of the VIVA Plus “Inom” typeface with lowercase letters

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Hi everyone,
For the past two years, I’ve been deeply involved in researching the “Inom” typeface, which was used between 2002 and 2007 by the German music TV channel VIVA Plus. It was originally designed exclusively for VIVA Plus by Chris Rehberger, but was also used in other projects – for example, in the corporate design of Hebbel am Ufer (a Berlin theatre) and in the NRW Tourismus logo (tourism board of the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia). However, its main and most recognizable use was on VIVA Plus, where it was featured across the entire on-air design.

Recently, I finally managed to find an almost complete version of Inom - exactly as it appeared on VIVA Plus for years: with all uppercase letters, numbers, and most of the essential special characters. Only a few characters, such as the tilde (~), are missing, which I can substitute from the Regular variant (a very similar typeface by Nik Thoenen, inspired by Inom).

My current goal:
I am now searching for the rare extended version of Inom that also includes lowercase letters. This version was only used briefly in 2006 on VIVA Plus (for example, in SMS crawls after a system update). The lowercase version has existed since 2002, as it appears for brief moments in certain intro animations, but it was not actively used for most of the channel’s run – which makes it extremely hard to find today.

Why the Regular isn’t a perfect substitute:
Although the Regular looks very similar at first glance, there are important differences – especially in rounded letters and certain symbols like “@” and “#”. These differences are even more noticeable in lowercase letters than in uppercase ones.

inom vs regular.jpg

Previous research:

  • Hebbel am Ufer PDFs: Only uppercase letters were embedded in the files, as that’s all they used in their designs.

  • NRW Tourismus PDFs: The original Inom was used for the logo, but headings were set in Regular. As a result, the embedded fonts in these files are only Regular, not Inom.

Conclusion:
I’ve achieved my main goal of obtaining the “classic” VIVA Plus version. Now, the last 10 % towards completion would be finding the version with true lowercase letters. If anyone owns this version or knows a source where it could be found, it would be an amazing find for me. This is a long-term passion project, important to me even if it’s “only” for private fan projects, cards, or stickers.
So if anyone can give me pointers to the font or even the font itself, I would really appreciate it, optional via PM.

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