The two, tall, twenty-something Dutch designers who arrived as speakers at Type90 in Oxford in 1990 were on the program with Neville Brody, Zuzana Licko, The Thunder Jockeys and Why Not Associates. Both instantly caught the attention of the international assembly there. Just van Rossum and Erik van Blokland had unique and bold ideas about creating digital fonts. These two had recently formed LettError after being brought together by their inspirational teacher Gerrit Noordzij while students at The Royal Academy for Fine and Applied Arts in The Hague. One of their first innovations was the Random font, FF Beowolf (1990) which they describe as “programmed to change in the printer so that each character would be unique.”

The “Randomtwins,” as dubbed by Erik Spiekermann of MetaDesign in Berlin where they both worked, then continued their type experiments adding two script faces FF Erikrighthand and FF Justlefthand, Van Blokland’s FF Trixie, a typewriter font, and Van Rossum’s FF Advert, FF Advert Rough, FF BeoSans, FF Schulschrift, FF Instant Types. Van Blokland also devised FF Kosmik (a Flipperfont) and FF Trixie Cyrillic among others. The two also invented fonts for FUSE, Neville Brody and Jon Wozencroft’s experimental digital magazine.

Considered great copy, LettError became a staple of the design press internationally and was even covered in Wired (an article by Spiekermann). LettError also graces a multitide of books on type and typography (including the recent Emotional Digital).

Year-by-year Van Rossum and Van Blokland brought their own charisma and humor to international conferences including Fuse, TypoBerlin and ATypI (where they also played significant roles in TypeLab, the hands-on workshops and technical seminars).

But even with this exposure, the full range of LettError’s work and their collaborations had not been fully documented. That has been rectified. A decade after Type90, LettError received the Charles Nypels 2000 Award (from the Charles Nypels Foundation at Jan van Eyck Academie in Maastrict), an oeuvre award for typography. For this occasion Van Rossum and Van Blokland created a limited edition book LettError (printed by the Drukkerij Rosbeek) which summarizes in content and form the breadth and depth of their work.

The theme assigned for this typography Award’s judges was “language and media” and each jury member [Dawn Barrett (Jury Chair, now at Rhode Island School of Design), Max Bruinsma (art critic, former editor-in-chief of Eye magazine), Gerard Hadders (graphic designer, former member of Hard Werken, teacher at Sint Joost, Breda), Pierre di Sciullo (graphic designer in Paris, and previous Nypels Award winner) and Teal Triggs (graphic designer, now at Kingston University)] cites a rationale for this recognition ranging from Van Rossum and Van Blokland’s contributions to typeface design, their newspaper LettError, the animation with superhero Typoman, experimentation with programming and their irreverent humor.

As Dawn Barrett comments, “Choosing LettError as the recipient of the oeuvre prize Charles Nypels Award 2000 was the jury’s recognition that, in addition to the consistent quality, craftsmanship and independence of their typographic innovation; the approach of Just van Rossum and Erik van Blokland is one where language and media are so conceptually united that one might quip that in their work, ‘the language is the medium.’”

LettError have produced their online version of the book, but the book itself is compelling for its clarity and integrity. Van Rossum and Van Blokland are much more than “poster boys” for the digital revolution; the two are known catalysts for testing the unknown, moving into shaping software as well as creating design and sharing this knowledge. In LettError, Van Rossum and Van Blokland tell an adventure story of overcoming challenges and freeing designers to create more effectively. LettError unravels technical dilemmas and demonstrates how Robofog, developed with Petr van Blokland, and Python, developed by Guido van Rossum, offer tools to demystify techniques essential to controlling the total design process. LettError demonstrates this by creating the entire book in “the book machine.”

As they present it in the text, “it would have been a shame to make this book—where we presented our ideas about typography, programming and design—using old, established tools. So we didn’t. For this occasion LettError developed a machine that generated the entire book, including images, colors, typography, color separations and fonts. A lot of work, but in the end this machine can do more than a regular layout program: it is more flexible; it takes care of many things all by itself and it helps to maintain consistency.” According to Van Blokland, the opportunity to do this book allowed them to refine much of what they had done before on other projects. Using Python (“We rewrote the LettError tool kit,” he says), LettError spent two solid months writing, designing, revising and producing this book.

And the resulting integration of text (in Dutch and English), and design (including experiments like a nine-section flip book) not only explains what they do and how they work but demonstrates it. There is subtlety and drama mixed into the design. The textface for the book is LTR Rossum and the headlines are done in FF Advert with a clever color change, black for the Dutch version, blue for the English version. Clear, colorful diagrams throughout illustrate processes or relationships including the color coding sequence of how FF Kosmik Flipper works and a “Fontmap” showing the connections between the various LettError fonts. To prove that “digital type deserved its freedom,” LettError also provides “post industrial” typography, examples of randomized color choices, and in a spread called “Allsorts,” type arranged as art.

Unsurprisingly, aside from working together (they maintain a “virtual” studio with Van Blokland in The Hague and Van Rossum in Haarlem), each works separately on individual projects and often they work invisibly when attacking code (next for the Web machine). Both bring their insights and experimentation to teaching. Van Blokland teaches at their alma mater in The Hague where Van Rossum is a guest lecturer.

The Nypels 2000 Award is a milestone for LettError, and LettError captures the last decade’s steep ascent up the digital curve. But Van Rossum and Van Blokland will keep ascending since they are deeply committed to rethinking the theory and processes of design and evolving the tools to improve it.

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