I try to never leave out samples of the Speedball Text Book.
In 1998 Frank Blokland was our teacher type design in The Hague at the KABK. He was very strict and he could almost see what music you were playing while doing your calligraphy homework. I had no clue what he was trying to teach us, but I wouldn't mind going back to those classes since I'm more into letters. In the booklet I describe an embarrassing naive moment, asking him if type design was the mathematics of graphic design.
In 1999 Peter Verheul (also in The Hague) introduced us to using Fontographer. That's when type and typography became more attractive and playfull. I listened to Eurythmics and Kraftwerk while finding the joy of type for the first time.
In 2000 I switched to the Rietveld Academie in Amsterdam, where we taught typography by the God of type design Gerard Unger. His lessons were nothing like what I was used to. His goal was to interest students for the subject. For the ones that found a click, he wouldn't mind giving extra attention. With him you could have a serious talk about type made out of cheese, if you wanted to. In this booklet I tell a story about how he tried to hunt me down after I had spread a cd with illegal type. Still sorry for that...
Also in 2000, we had class by Danny and Marieke of Experimental Jetset. We fell in love with them. They were young, they were cool, they were insecure, their work rocked and their assignments were cool. Most of all they were human. They were open about their daily life as a graphic designer, which made everything a bit more realistic for us as students.
In this booklet I show how I used my Fontographer-skills for digitizing my grandmothers handwriting for the design of a fanzine (an assignment by Experimental Jetset).
