‘Grand Cru Classés’ sprouting from Antwerp soil

On Wednesday 16 November the Expert class Type design 2016–2017 course will start. The EcTd course comprises ten sessions at the Museum Plantin-Moretus in Antwerp during a period of roughly eight months. In between the sessions the students are expected to work hard and dedicatedly on the teamwise revival project and the new personal type design. Subscription is possible until one week before the start of the course.

In the course my research and resulting PhD dissertation on Renaissance type patterning, which I successfully defended at Leiden University on Tuesday 11 October 2016, play a major role. Because there is direct access to the Renaissance artefacts in the collection of the Museum Plantin-Moretus, this patterning can be easily tested and applied on (revivals of) historical type.

See you in Antwerp!

An updated EcTd course description is now available as PDF.

Yesterday the seven EcTd students gave nice and interesting presentations on the process and progress of their personal projects. From Guyot to Tavernier, from Van den Keere to Dwiggins, and from civilité to nifty color fonts capturing the French-Renaissance patterning. Below you will find a small selection of photos taken at the cozy auditorium of the Museum Plantin-Moretus, where the EcTd sessions take place.

A very nice aspect of the Expert class Type design course is that the lessons take place in the Museum Plantin-Moretus. Because of this, students have direct access to the museum’s huge and amazing collection of punches, matrices, foundry type, and prints. Also this year a lot of historical material was meticulously investigated: not only for the aforementioned GrosMoyen revival, but also for a number of personal projects. The photo above was taken in the new reading room of the Museum Plantin-Moretus.



This image shows on the right page Garamont’s Gros Canon Romain in the type specimen Index sive specimen characterum Christophori Plantini from 1567. On the left the revival made by the EcTd 2016–2017 students, which is here for comparison automatically spaced using the LS Cadencer application, is presented. Obviously the long s, fi ligature, and diacritics were missing still when the test was made. As you probably know, the LS Cadencer was developed by Lukas Schneider during the 2014–2015 course and it is interesting to see how the tool is used by the new students.

Under the approving eyes of Christoffel Plantin and his relatives, painted by Rubens and his peers, the Annual Academic Meeting of the Plantin Institute of Typography took place in the wonderful Museum Plantin-Moretus last Saturday. The internationally renowned and awarded Dutch typographer Irma Boom was the special speaker on the occasion.



Seven Expert class Type design laureates received their diplomas: Diederik Corvers, Paula Mastrangelo, Britt Möricke, Benjamin Sporken, Daphne de Vries, Mark van Wageningen, and Channa Wijmans. We will see and hear more about them and their work in the near future, I reckon. After the ceremony the reception started in the room in which the students exhibit their projects.



At the reception I gave a short talk in which I emphasized the enthusiasm and dedication of this year’s students, and the quality of the presented work. At the EcTd course in Antwerp research plays a very important role besides, of course, craftsmanship and technical insight. The course is far from easy and quite time consuming, but the students handled the tasks perfectly.



BTW, the 2017–2018 course starts in November. In case you are interested, do not hesitate to contact me.

(photographs by Daphne de Vries and Paul Adriaensen)

For the group’s project the current Expert class Type design students investigate the similarities and differences between a text-sized roman cut by Hendrik van den Keere (ca.1540–1580) and one of his very small roman types. The research questions are: to what extent were these types based and standardized on the same model, and how does this relate to the idea that the old punchcutters treated every size separately as a new typeface purely by eyeballing?



The EcTd course consists of ten sessions at the Museum Plantin-Moretus and often the students spent extra days in the museum’s library to study punches, matrices, and books from the sixteenth century that were printed with the type they investigate. Every year a private Facebook group is used by the students to intensively exchange info, knowledge, and data.



During the past two sessions at the Museum Plantin-Moretus in Antwerp, the students gave presentations on the group’s project and on their personal ones, which are also based on artifacts in the museum. These sessions were highly impressive and I already very much look forward to the exhibition of the student’s work in Antwerp coming September. This expo will be at the Catapult gallery, within walking distance from the ATypI Antwerp conference venue.



BTW, the group was unfortunately not complete when discussing the material last time (second photo).

Automation and especially batch-processing of font data have been elementary and intrinsic parts of the digital type production since its early days. The IKARUS system, which was invented and developed in the 1970s, was the first font-production tool that made the digitization of resolution-independent contours possible. The IKARUS file structure was developed with the handling of large amounts of font data in mind. Hence, it was highly suitable for batch-processing, which was controlled via an internal Perl-related command language. However, the IKARUS system was very expensive and basically only affordable for manufacturers of typesetting machines, who produced their proprietary font formats from the IKARUS data.



Together with the rise of desktop publishing came a standardization of font formats, i.e., PostScript Type1 and TrueType, which eventually were combined in the OpenType format. New low-priced font tools, for example Fontographer and Fontlab Studio, emerged and the focus shifted from the manual conversion of analogue models (using a lens cursor and tablet) into IKARUS contours, to directly drawing cubic Bézier curves on the computer’s screen. Also the emphasis was not anymore on the handling of large amounts of font data. After all, the new font tools made it possible for type designers to develop their own typefaces. Although the new storage formats made it much simpler to handle small-scale font production than the IKARUS file format, scripting and batch processing had to be built on top when this became needed again.

Python scripting provided the basis for enhancing the relatively limited functionality of the new font tools. Since 1995, when it first showed up in RoboFog (a customized version of Fontograper 3.5), it has become more and more a standard in the font production. Nowadays most of the commonly used font editors, for example Glyphs, RoboFont, and FonLab VI, contain a Python-programming interface, which simplifies the process of accessing data in font files –even for those who are not experienced programmers. Consequently, the type designer can control, customize, and enhance the functionality of existing tools –or can even create new ones. This optional, additional functionality completely changed the mindset of many in the type profession.




A new part of the educational program of the Expert class Type design (EcTd) course of the Plantin Institute of Typography in Antwerp, is an in-depth introduction in Python scripting. Lukas Schneider, who holds a master’s degree from TypeMedia and who is also an EcTd laureate, will provide for two daylong sessions on scripting. As an highly experienced type designer, as well as owner of the Revolver Type Foundry, Lukas is very much familiar with the handling of large amounts of font data. He also scripted the LS Cadencer tool for auto-spacing that is based on algorithms from yours truly. Currently Lukas and I jointly develop another Python tool: LS Consistencer. This small application is, as its name reveals, meant for controlling consistency aspects in batch, such as character widths and stem thickness, within a type design.

The ability to script is undeniably an advantage: after all, it makes the type designer / font producer more flexible. However, during the EcTd course scripting will be, besides taught, also discussed. Is, for example, the current emphasis on scripting due to an inevitable and absolute requirement, or perhaps also the result of common present-day conditioning with certain tools? Is it possible to solve specific technical (or even design) issues by, for example, combining different font tools, instead of constantly being a beta tester of scripts? After all, it is not the purpose of the EcTd course to stir its students in a certain direction nor to judge the options, but to provide a solid general foundation on which students can base their own conclusions and, in this case, workflow –with or without scripting.

BTW, if you are attending the ATypI Antwerp conference, planning a visit to the Museum Plantin-Moretus and perhaps have questions about the presentation of the historical material in the old type foundry (and the accompanying texts), you can always contact me at the conference. Some more info can be found here.

Tomorrow is the last day of the In Plantin’s Footsteps expo at the wonderful Baroque St. Paul’s Church in Antwerp. For a month and a half the study results of the Expert class Type design (EcTd) 2016–2017 and 2017–2018 laureates were exhibited in the church’s chapel. The exposition was opened on the evening of Thursday 13 September in the presence of roughly 100 interested connoisseurs, of whom many came directly from the ATypI conference venue.



The exhibition is a great success and among the visitors in the past six weeks were a couple of the students who will follow the upcoming EcTd 2018–2019 course (starting next month). As in previous years the group is quite internationally oriented and the students come from as far as Russia and Israel.



Among the speakers at the ATypI Antwerp conference were a couple of EcTd laureates. On Wednesday 12 September Elí Castellanos and Eloïse Parrack gave a talk on the 2017–2018 group’s research on the intriguing, far-reaching standardization and systematization, which can be found in the different body sizes of the roman type that Hendrik van den Keere cut. They showed the results of their in-depth investigation of Van den Keere’s punches and matrices that can be found in the unique collection of the Museum Plantin-Moretus.



Also on Wednesday the 12th, alumni Walda Verbaenen and Michel Paré (EcTd 2014–2015) gave a talk on the ongoing extensive Rosart Project. In 2019 and 2020 there will be related exhibitions in Haarlem and Antwerp.