5 Dutch Type Designers

Yves Peters

Last edited May 13, 2014

Starting up FontShop was only the beginning of Erik Spiekermann‘s ventures in digital type. Soon after the launch of the original vendor of digital type he teamed up with that other famous graphic designer, Neville Brody, and founded FontFont, which has since then become the largest independent foundry of original type designs. Not only does it produce some contemporary classics, but it also houses wildly imaginative designs, and spearheaded many innovations in digital type technology.

The first release by the new FontFont foundry featured early typefaces by Martin Majoor, Max Kisman, Peter Verheul, Erik van Blokland, and Just van Rossum. Its printed type specimen was beautifully designed by Van Rossum, and produced in three language versions – English, Dutch and German. The title of the English version was “5 Dutch Type Designers”.

Read Martin Majoor’s recollections, and the interview with Erik Spiekermann on The FontFeed.

The process of making of FF Rosetta was closely linked to that of the fonts in the FF Kisman package, which contains five designs (FF Cutout, FF Network, FF Scratch, FF Scratch Outline and FF Vortex): all are display faces originally made for various magazines art-directed by Max Kisman, and designed on the earliest Macintosh computers.

The “FF Kisman” package is a collection of five display fonts originally made for various magazines art-directed by Max Kisman: FF Cutout, FF Network, FF Scratch, FF Scratch Outline and FF Vortex. FF Scratch was hand-cut from ulano masking film, and FF Cutout was made with scissors, too. FF Network, like FF Rosetta, was a very early Macintosh font designed for Kisman’s own use. All were... Read More

FF Erikrighthand and FF Justlefthand are two of the first examples of loose, natural handwriting made to work as type. The software used to produce the designs was just being developed. It certainly didn’t hurt that Erik van Blokland and Just van Rossum actually know “how to write.” That’s not to imply that van Blokland and van Rossum were merely literate, but rather that had been taught... Read More

Jan Middendorp described FF Brokenscript in his book Dutch Type (2004) thus: “It is a study in Fraktur, or blackletter, possibly inspired by Gerrit Noordzij’s extensive writings on the subject.” One of the first blackletter typefaces in the FontFont library, the design takes cues from the early textura scribal tradition. The letterforms have been somewhat updated however, especially the... Read More