Intone - MA Typeface Design

From top to bottom and right
to left:
1. Hendrik de Roo’s typeface
Egmont cursive in Jan Visser
Fluitekruid, Verzen
2. Hendrik de Roo’s typeface
Erasmus in Margot Vos (1923),
De nieuwe lent’, Em Qyerido,
Amsterdam
3. Greek matrices from the Plantin
Moretus museum
4. Pierre Didot typeface Didot
Elder (1819) redeveloped by
Francois Rappo
1. Intone, a collage of inspiration and knowledge
1.1 Reading: A source of knowledge
This past year in Reading has been a constant exploration of different ideas and points of
view regarding type. Being exposed to different people, different historical resources and
different imagery, I managed to create a solid baggage that helped me understand what type
is all about. The interesting part about this baggage is that everyone has it, but it is not the
same for any of us. It is even built from the same pieces, but each one of us has
assembled a different puzzle, depending on his personal background and expectations
from the course.
1.2 Several sources of inspiration for my typeface
At the beginning of the year, I formulated a brief stating that the process of typedesign
could not escape conventional methods. This has been a great struggle for me, due to the
excitement I felt from acquiring so much knowledge here, in Reading. Trying to be exciting
within convention was a process that I could not follow. After reading Gerard Unger’s book,
“While we are reading”, it became clear to me that my situation was not a personal failure
but merely the consequence of a conventional typeface.
When it comes to typedesign, convention is the enemy of creativity. Therefore, I decided
to put this project temporarily in a drawer and start anew, with a more creative one. Four
items that drew my attention were the crucial elements that led me to this decision. The
first two are two poetry books that came into my possession. Both were typeset with Sjoerk
Hendrik de Roos’s typefaces, Egmont cursive and Erasmus. I found the small details (like
the serifs on the ascenders of the l, h, k, b and d in Egmont) of each letter to be very fascinating.
They made each character unique while, simultaneously, they created an interesting
pattern on the paper.
The third element was discovered during our trip to the Plantin Moretus museum. A “g”
that looked different from all the others caught my attention immediately. It was the “g”
from the Didot typefamily. Was it a mistake? It was almost standing out of the text but, at
the same time, was blending in a very harmonious way with the rest of the letters.
The last decisive detail was the discovery of some Greek punches that did not look like
Greek at all. Being Greek, my fellow students were asking me what these letters were. I felt
incapable of giving an accurate answer because these ligatures where completely different
from the commonly known modern letterforms.
After these discoveries I had enough food for thought and the design process that will be
analyzed in this essay was happily starting once again.
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