Never thougth I would manage to draw the italic in three days. It’s amazing what I can do when I am stressed like hell. Bring the coffee and cigarettes!
Archive for May, 2007
Congo & Congo Italic
May 31, 20074 weeks to go
May 28, 2007Typo Berlin
May 12, 2007Next week all the type geeks will converge to Berlin to indulge in an orgy of typographic lectures. Naturally Type & Media will be present! Interestingly someone sent me a link about the nationalities that will be present at Typo-Berlin. The pie chart clearly shows that the germans are the majority of visitors. But what is surprising is the rather high number of Belgians compared to the Dutch and the Brits. There will be 37 belgians, that is almost twice as much as the dutch. OK, 37 is not a lot but if you think that we actually outnumber the “great-dutch-nation-of-typographers” then something must be happening in Belgium. How to explain this sudden interest for typography in Belgium? I can’t.
As far as I know type design stopped in belgium with Hendrik van den Keere around 1580. However, there seem to be a new generation of belgian type designer such as Jo De Baerdemaeker and Frederik Berlaen. But it remains very marginal and in an ever increasing globalized world the origins of the designers cary less and less importance. Don’t get me wrong, I am not nostalgic or a chauvinist, I am just curious to know why there is so much interest in typography in Belgium. This renewed interest will hopefully bring an end to more than 427 years of complete disregard for type design.
Feel free to correct me if i have omitted to mention other contemporary belgian type designers.