Dick Dooijes (May 6, 1909 – June 20, 1998) was a Dutch

typeface designer Type design is the art and process of designing typefaces. This involves drawing each letterform using a consistent style. The basic concepts and design variables are described below. A typeface differs from other modes of graphic production su ...

. He worked at the Amsterdam Type Foundry for over forty years and directed the

Gerrit Rietveld Academie The Gerrit Rietveld Academie, also known as Rietveld School of Art & Design and Rietveld Academy, is an art academy in Amsterdam, Netherlands. The academy was founded in 1924 and offers programs in fine arts and design. History In 1924, the I ...

from 1968 to 1974.

Biography

Dick Dooijes was born in

Amsterdam Amsterdam ( , , , lit. ''The Dam on the River Amstel'') is the Capital of the Netherlands, capital and Municipalities of the Netherlands, most populous city of the Netherlands, with The Hague being the seat of government. It has a population ...

on May 6, 1909. He began working at Lettergieterij Amsterdam (the Amsterdam Type Foundry) in 1926 as S.H. de Roos's assistant and pupil. He worked with de Roos on the design of the typefaces Nobel and Egmont. In 1940, Dooijes succeeded de Roos as artistic director of Lettergieterij Amsterdam. Dooijes' first solo typeface design was a Hebrew alphabet, which he could not read, created for Palestinian printing companies. With the outbreak of the Second World War, however, he was unable to contact potential clients and production on the typeface was abandoned. After the war, he completed 's designs for Rondo following Schlesinger's death in a concentration camp. Rondo became a popular

display typeface A display typeface is a typeface that is intended for use at large sizes for headings, rather than for extended passages of body text. Display typefaces will often have more eccentric and variable designs than the simple, relatively restrained ...

in the 1950s and 1960s, particularly on shopfronts and packaging. In 1959 Dooijes completed the

sans-serif In typography and lettering, a sans-serif, sans serif, gothic, or simply sans letterform is one that does not have extending features called "serifs" at the end of strokes. Sans-serif typefaces tend to have less stroke width variation than seri ...

Mercator, his first complete type family, which shared similarities with

Helvetica Helvetica (originally Neue Haas Grotesk) is a widely used sans-serif typeface developed in 1957 by Swiss typeface designer Max Miedinger and Eduard Hoffmann. Helvetica is a neo-grotesque design, one influenced by the famous 19th century (1890s) ...

and

Univers Univers () is a large sans-serif typeface family designed by Adrian Frutiger and released by his employer Deberny & Peignot in 1957. Classified as a Grotesque (typeface classification), neo-grotesque sans-serif, one based on the model of nineteen ...

. He also designed Contura, released in 1965. Lectura, Dooijes' final typeface, a

serif In typography, a serif () is a small line or stroke regularly attached to the end of a larger stroke in a letter or symbol within a particular font or family of fonts. A typeface or "font family" making use of serifs is called a serif typeface ...

, was released in 1969, seven years after he first conceived it. He had become slightly bitter with type design after realizing that he could have earned much more money from some of his designs if he had been a freelancer rather than an employee of the type foundry, as he was not entitled to royalties. He became director of the

in 1968 and remained in the position until 1974. After his retirement, he took up writing, publishing an autobiography titled ''Mijn leven met letters'' (My Life with Letters) and a book about Dutch typographers. He died on June 20, 1998, in

Baarn Baarn () is a municipality and a town in the Netherlands, near Hilversum in the province of Utrecht. The municipality of Baarn The municipality of Baarn consists of the following towns: Baarn, Eembrugge, Lage Vuursche. The town of Baarn Ba ...

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Dooijes, Dick 1909 births 1998 deaths Dutch typographers and type designers Designers from Amsterdam Academic staff of Gerrit Rietveld Academie