JS-SANS GRAFISCH (Regular) ― Geometric Sans-Serif
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Another font addition to the ever evolving and growing collection of revivals and inspired works called LETTERS OP MAAT, a project celebrating and trying to recreate the typographic contributions originally designed by Dutch graphic designer Jurriaan Schrofer.

This time I did a revival  based on a sans-serif lettering concept Schrofer did in 1968. The lettering was used in several of his later smaller projects, mainly for some design work regarding the Schrofer family. One of such was the wedding card he designed for Olga Schrofer & Djien Injo. Schrofer had never designed a complete alphabet for this specific lettering, and all the gathered resource material I was able to collect ( 1, 2, 3, 4 ) still yielded a combined total of 19 different lowercase letters "acdefghijlnoprstuwy"

Anyway, by the looks of it we can asume that this derived from or eventually had led to another one of his alphabet systems that came around that same time. This was one of his alphabet systems that he developed into a complete typeface. First appearance back in 1968 on Olga & Djien's wedding card. Later a slight modified variation of that same sans-serif system was used for the Dutch 1969 postage stamp design that celebrated the 50th anniversary of the 1919 International Workers' Organization. Several more instances would later follow, But the best and most complete preview of this sans-serif concept is probably seen on the red / white alphabet sample composition he did. Here a semi-bold version was completed to a full lowercase (a-z) alphabet set and small caps figures (no symbols or punctuation marks)

This particular alphabet system eventually saw extensive use, and can be seen in many of his work, ranging from book designs and brochures all the way to postage-stamps. So there is no shortage of resource material on this alphabet system.
Over the course of its existence the alphabet was constantly evolving, and Schrofer kept expanding the system with additional new weights and slight variations. But during his time with Mouton & Co. the concept basics for this sans system became one of his lettering workhorses, and saw widespread application.

Schrofer made several attempts to create complete typefaces, but this was never his goal. "Is it necessary.." he wrote, "To make complete alphabets with upper- and lowercase, figures, diacritics and seriously adorned with a name, when aim is merely a formal investigation into basic recipes?"
Schrofer's domain was never the design of typographic alphabets to be used by other designers. In addition, the lack of any naming for its alphabet systems and lettering-concepts can sometimes make it difficult to tell things apart, or instead group them into several larger font families, consisting of multiple weights and -or slightly modified style variations.

This specific proportion that I used for the revival of the alphabet system only appeared in three small occasions of Schrofer's autonomous works.
It basically is the same simple, clean, but solid looking geometric sans-serif system he often reused. It is also the same general concept for the alphabet system STF_SANS ROUNDED was based upon, but with some minor changes.

This variation comes in a smaller weight and less condensed form, more open-spaced letters that almost feel expanded. The medium contrast on its vertical axis remains. In addition the overall character set was greatly extended as well as several other minute changes that were incorporated.

Interrested in more of my Jurriaan Schrofer inspired? Please take a look a my complete collection of Fontstructions tagged with STF-LETTERS OP MAAT for the full catalog of fonts I contributed to this project so far.

Cheers