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Fred Smeijers

Fred Smeijers is a type designer who specializes in typographic research and development for product manufacturers. Among his typeface designs are FF Quadraat and Quadraat Sans, TEFF Renard, and the OurType Arnhem, Fresco and Sansa. Born in the Netherlands, Smeijers studied graphic design at the Academy of Art in Arnhem. His first practice came in the mid-1980s with the firm of Océ, just then entering the field of typography with laser printers. This set the pattern for Smeijers’s long engagement with type design in its most functional applications, as part of product design. After five years he left to work in graphic design, helping to establish the group Quadraat (in Arnhem). The name of the design group was also given to his first published typeface: FF Quadraat, launched by FontShop International in 1992. His work of the 1990s included the expansion of the Quadraat family, type and lettering design jobs for Philips, collaboration on Martin Majoor’s Telefont type design, typefaces such as TEFF Renard and Romanee, and his first book “Counterpunch”. With the award of the Gerrit Noordzij Prize in 2000, Smeijers’s achievements in the field of practice, research and education were formally recognized. This prize included a retrospective exhibition of his work, held in The Hague in 2003. His book “Type now” was also published then, as part of the award. That year also saw the launch of the label he co-runs: OurType. In 2004 Smeijers was appointed Professor of Digital Typography at the Hochschule für Grafik und Buchkunst, Leipzig.

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