VAN NELLE (Blueprint) — Geometric modernist sans
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☛ THE SOURCE
A re-interpretation of the 1926 geometric sans serif alphabet system reproduction by Jacob Jongert, published in a 1930 sourcebook by N.J. van de Vecht. The geometric uppercase set of the alphabet system is what would later become the famous sans serif capitals which he used for lettering throughout many of his Van Nelle materials.
☛ THE FONTSTRUCTION
Attempt at making a convincing recap of the original alphabet by Jacob Jongert as it was shown in the 1930s sourcebook, and extrapolate that into a full functional font. The decision to go with a small grid sparked a number of limitations in terms of the design freedom that forced some inevitable changes. But the general idea sort of became not to make it a revival, but rather more or less a faithful revision. One that would still be instantly recognizable yet didn't necessarily had to be all about accuracy.
☛ —The small grid design made sure this wasn't happening anyway!
But, for instance, the most striking difference between the two fonts (their weight) in fact is such a byproduct for one of those limitations. Something FS's small grid couldn't properly reproduce, so VAN NELLE (Blueprint) has a slight stronger weight, making the font somewhat of a bold style version of the original. This in addition provided me with slight extra freedom to inplement a little personal touch for further manicure of the font's finer details. Which allowed me to cope with some of the optical clunkiness that come with a fatter face and the grid based design.
Besides these circumstantial differences, which were basically beyond my control, I've also made some intentional changes to make the typeface more practical to use. The changes include things like the significantly lowered ascender height, the slight different width for certain letters, larger tittle (dot above i, j & ij), and several more. despite these changes I believe it very much still reflects what Jongerts once invisioned for the system.
☛ SOME NOTES ON THE ORIGINAL AND ITS CREATOR
Jacob Jongert(1883-1942) was a advertising designer from the Netherlands. After varied studies, including being Roland Holst’s assistant and an acquaintance and colleague of S. H. de Roos [who brought the Arts & Crafts ideas of William Morris to the Netherlands and devoted his career to book design and typography] with whom Jongert experimented with several printing techniques and discovered graphic design as his ideal art form.
¶ In 1923 Jongert rolled in a unique and long-term collaboration with the Van Nelle company, where he became head designer, a position he held until 1940. The Van Nelle company had an extremely modern approach towards advertising (they even commissioned Cassandre to do a poster) and Jongert created for the firm a recognizable image with clear shapes, powerful letters and primary colours, totally Dutch avant-garde in style, and with a strict and rigorous approach directly linked to De Stijl principles. The corporate identity he created has become a milestone in the design world.
¶ The lettering, however, is the driving force that ties it all together. The style is a straightforward set of plain, mono-linear, sans serif capitals in a style that just started to come into fashion in the late 1920s, early 1930s with the rise of functionalism and geometric type design. Yet, while these ideas were already thrown out there, its clever simplicity plus the systematic and cohesive way Jongert implemented his lettering was unusual at the time. The square and minimal construction of the forms allowed the letters to contract and expand to fit any situation, yet maintain a consistent and recognizable appearance throughout the Van Nelle line. ¶ Something we only recently have learned to appreciate is to see his hand crafted system amid the current advancements in variable-font technology, which offers a similar kind of flexibility to typeface designs. A quality that certainly placed him well ahead of its time.
What I particulary like about Jongert's original is the stuff that is going on in the lowercase set of the alphabet, which are those quirky lowercase letter inventions that are different from the more traditional modernist sans, but sadly the lowercase letters were pretty much never used in his works.
I created a simple PDF typeface specimen for those who want to see the high-resolution preview.
PDF SPECIMEN WAS DELETED
Thats all Folks ☚
☛ Cheers
BOUWHUIS - 'Bauhaus'-modernism inspired minimalist geometric sans
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I am in a Bauhaus-vibe last couple of day..
So here is yet another venture into the modernist minimalism aesthetics of the previous century.
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This Font losely draws on the basic concept for the 'Universal Type' that was originally designed by Bauhaus student Herbert Bayer.
It's basically a hugely inspired tribute to Herbert Bayer's several forms of ―'Universal'.
But I want to be clear on the fact that this isn't a revival of the original alphabet or anything along those lines for that matter.
Instead it is a intermingling personal interpretation of his multiple works and ideas. Attempting to merge this recollection of Bayer's rational 'functionalist'-approach towards combining aesthetics and function, as by which he is answering to the 'Bauhaus'-philosophy and the 'Form follows function'― design principle.
But besides being a 'inspired' recollection, still the main focus for this FontStruction was to come up with this personalized and stylistic derivative version that pays homage to various of his original work. Unifying the various characteristic Bayer idea's-n-bits within my personal visual representation of the general concept into a new piece.
For it's primary style-concept I envisioned BOUWHUIS being something fresh and somewhat different from the gross majority of similar inspired works out there. This led to the decision for going with a more contemporary and modernized (― as oposed to modernist) style lettering.
In addition to that I pursued a much more vibrant and nuanced typographers sensitivity towards letterform calligraphy and decorative features.
Strong geometric core elements of the font make up for a expressive simplistic structural basic form and it has 'zero' stroke modulation for thickness.
It's regular weight combined with that predominant circular and square-based geometry of the letterforms result in this 'open', and overall ventilated characteristic of the design.
The typical crude appearance that usually comes with a strong geometric sans like this was compensated for in BOUWHUIS by the design's subtle deviations in form and the various decorative calligraphic letter-components.
Something that completely denied Bayer's principle in approach to modern typography and to create an "idealist typeface" was; The reintroduction of it's uppercase letters.
Part of Bayer's rationale was to simplify typesetting, strip all that he felt was unnecessary or the typeface had no need for in order to function, till there was not much more left than just the nearly bare-naked form.
It seems that unintentionally some innuendo of Art-Deco―flavoured hints also found their way into parts of this design.... ―Hmmmz
― but I think I like them, so no worries on behalf of that
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As a little bonus topping it all off there is also a super tiny experimental lowercase caracter-set (X-Height=1 grid unit)
Located in the Unicode block for "Halfwidth and fullwidth forms"
I hope y'all like it so far, more will follow soon.
Cheers