Born at Arnhem, Netherlands, 1942. Studied graphic design, typography and type design from 1963–’67 at the Gerrit Rietveld Academy, Amsterdam. He teaches as visiting Professor at The University of Reading, UK, Department of Typography and Graphic Communication, and he was, till 31/12/11, Professor of Typography at the University of Leiden. Free lance designer from ’72. He has designed stamps, coins, magazines, newspapers, books, logos, corporate identities, annual reports and other objects, and many typefaces.
He was awarded several honours, such as the H.N.Werkman-prize in 1984 for all his typographic work – for digital type designs in particular and for the way he reconciled technology and typographic culture –, or the award of the Society of Typographic Afficionados in the USA in 2009. He has written articles for the trade press, and several larger publications, such as Landscape with Letters (1989), linking the usually limited scope of type and typography with a much wider cultural view. His book Terwijl je leest — about reading – has been published in Dutch, German, English, Italian and Spanish. He lectures frequently in Holland and abroad, about his own work, type design, the reading process, and related subjects.
All his type designs:
Markeur (1972), M.O.L. (1974), Demos (1976), Demos (new version 2001), Praxis (1977), Hollander (1983), Flora (1984), Swift (1985), Swift 2.0 (new version 1995), Amerigo (1986), Oranda (1987), Argo (1991), Delftse Poort (1991), Decoder (1992), Gulliver (1993), ANWB fonts (1997), Capitolium (1998), Paradox (1999), Coranto (2000), Vesta (2001), BigVesta (2003), Allianz (2005), Capitolium News (2006).
