It was German storefront lettering from the 1930s that inspired FF Karbid, and you can see the peculiarities of this in the Display version. Using this as a starting point, designer Verena Gerlach then distilled the ideas into a family of well-behaved but energetic text faces.

In 2011, the typeface has been refurbished and has now ten basic styles plus Text, Slab and Display versions. FF Karbid Text reveals a reduced, more neutral design while FF Karbid Slab is a completely new companion. All families contain Light, Regular, Medium, Bold, Black and their Italics. Many alternate characters have been added, for example low- and high-waist uppercase letter versions in FF Karbid, FF Karbid Text and FF Karbid Slab; single-storey a and g as well as bullets and arrows.

Learn more about FF Karbid and Verena Gerlach in this interview on I Love Typography.