Hamburgevons & Hamburgefonstiv

Hamburgevons is a keyword used by type designers. "HAMBURGEVONS" and "hamburgevons" contain all the basic strokes used in the Latin alphabet including stems and diagonals and rounded strokes, as well stems and rounds.

Words like HAMBURGEVONS/hamburgevons, HAMBURGEFONSTIV/hamburgefonstiv, and CHAMPION/champion are called key words, test words, or trial words. The idea is if the key word looks good then the rest of the font will too. Besides incorporating the basic letter shapes, key words are also useful for establishing letterspacing.

The use of HAMBURGEVONS and HAMBURGEFONSTIV goes back to the late 70's/early 80's at old skool type houses like Linotype, ITC, and URW. Others credit Donald Knuth's classic The Metafont Book (ISBN 0201134446).