The designers at House Industries, produce a huge number of type faces for the graphic design world. So they didn't seem to need any more help than their usually flamboyant packaging, and beautiful product, to sell their type face "Chalet". So I think that it was with a bit of mischief, and a glint in their eye, that they decided to tell a few furpheys, (and all publicity is good publicity).
They created a story of the creator the type face, Rene Albert Chalet, and thought people would get the connection between House/Chalet.
This man refined his clean new type face years before Miedinger got around to do Helvetica. He had attended Zurich School of Arts and Crafts, submitted type faces to Deberney & Peignot, who rejected his Bauhaus aberration. He then retreated into marionettes theatre.
It would be hard not to believe the story, with the catalog "plastered with glowing endorsements" from the likes of Michael Beirut, Erik Spiekermann and Charles Anderson. "Those guys kicked better BS than we did". Notable designers wrote appreciations "to support the farce", such as Johnathon Hoefler, Mathew Carter and Tobias Frere-Jones.
The story was taken up I.D. magazine, and appeared inFontShop Beigium's Druk magazine, and the book "Type One discipline and progress in typography", available from the Kingscliff TAFE library. Very good marketing, seeing people are still writing about House Industries.
Type One:ISBN 3-89955-056-0
House Industries:ISBN 3-931126-20-X
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