Fred Smeijers (

Eindhoven Eindhoven () is a city and municipality in the Netherlands, located in the southern province of North Brabant of which it is its largest. With a population of 238,326 on 1 January 2022,Dutch Dutch commonly refers to: * Something of, from, or related to the Netherlands * Dutch people () * Dutch language () Dutch may also refer to: Places * Dutch, West Virginia, a community in the United States * Pennsylvania Dutch Country People E ...

type 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 ...

researcher Research is " creative and systematic work undertaken to increase the stock of knowledge". It involves the collection, organization and analysis of evidence to increase understanding of a topic, characterized by a particular attentiveness ...

and writer, educated at the ArtEZ Hogeschool voor de Kunsten in

Arnhem Arnhem ( or ; german: Arnheim; South Guelderish: ''Èrnem'') is a city and municipality situated in the eastern part of the Netherlands about 55 km south east of Utrecht. It is the capital of the province of Gelderland, located on both banks of ...

in the early 1980s. Smeijers is the creative director and co-founder of the typeface design and publishing company Type By. In 2019 Smeijers was appointed Professor in Typeface Design at the

University of Reading The University of Reading is a public university in Reading, Berkshire, England. It was founded in 1892 as University College, Reading, a University of Oxford extension college. The institution received the power to grant its own degrees in 192 ...

in the UK.

Work

After his graduation, Smeijers worked for

Océ Canon Production Printing, formerly known as Océ until the end of 2019, is a Netherlands-based subset of Canon that develops, manufactures and sells printing and copying hardware and related software. The product line includes office printing an ...

– a Dutch manufacturer of

printing Printing is a process for mass reproducing text and images using a master form or template. The earliest non-paper products involving printing include cylinder seals and objects such as the Cyrus Cylinder and the Cylinders of Nabonidus. The ea ...

and

copying Copying is the duplication of information or an artifact based on an instance of that information or artifact, and not using the process that originally generated it. With analog forms of information, copying is only possible to a limited degree o ...

hardware. Between 1986 and 1990, he worked at the

industrial design Industrial design is a process of design applied to physical Product (business), products that are to be manufactured by mass production. It is the creative act of determining and defining a product's form and features, which takes place in advan ...

department as a

typographic Typography is the art and technique of typesetting, arranging type to make written language legibility, legible, readability, readable and beauty, appealing when displayed. The arrangement of type involves selecting typefaces, Point (typogra ...

advisor, designing

typeface A typeface (or font family) is the design of lettering that can include variations in size, weight (e.g. bold), slope (e.g. italic), width (e.g. condensed), and so on. Each of these variations of the typeface is a font. There are list of type ...

s for early

laser printer Laser printing is an electrostatic digital printing process. It produces high-quality text and graphics (and moderate-quality photographs) by repeatedly passing a laser beam back and forth over a negatively-charged cylinder called a "drum" to d ...

s. In the mid-1980s Smeijers started to develop an interest in the early 16th century technique of

punchcutting Punchcutting is a craft used in traditional typography to cut letter punches in steel as the first stage of making metal type. Steel punches in the shape of the letter would be used to stamp matrices into copper, which were locked into a mould sh ...

. The insights he acquired from these experiments influence the way he designs typefaces. This became first apparent in his typeface FF Quadraat, a classic book typeface with interesting and innovative details. Other Smeijers' retail typefaces are FF Quadraat Sans, FF Quadraar Display, FF Quadraat Headliner, and FF Quadraat Mono (

FontFont FontShop International was an international manufacturer of digital typefaces (fonts), based in Berlin. It was one of the largest digital Type foundry, type foundries. The ''FontFont'' library of fonts contains designs by 160 type designers, amon ...

); Renard (

The Enschedé Font Foundry ''The'' () is a grammatical article in English, denoting persons or things already mentioned, under discussion, implied or otherwise presumed familiar to listeners, readers, or speakers. It is the definite article in English. ''The'' is the ...

), Nobel (co-designed with Andrea Fuchs,

Dutch Type Library Dutch Type Library is a digital font foundry based in 's-Hertogenbosch, Netherlands, established in 1990 by Frank E. Blokland. DTL designs digital fonts and develops font software. Alongside original designs such as the Documenta and Caspari famil ...

); Arnhem, Arnhem Display, Arnhem Fine, Fresco, Fresco Sans, Fresco Informal, Custodia, Sansa, Monitor, Ludwig, Puncho, Bery, Bery Roman, and Bery Tuscan (OurType); Haultin (based on the work of

Pierre Haultin Pierre Haultin (c. 1510 – 1587) was a French printer, publisher, punchcutter and typefounder. He was the nephew of the famous Parisian women printer Charlotte Guillard. As a punchcutter, he may have been trained by Claude Garamont, who wo ...

), Lyonnaise, Gantoise, Sloan, Lambrusco. Smeijers has also designed custom typefaces and iconic logos for ''

Philips Koninklijke Philips N.V. (), commonly shortened to Philips, is a Dutch multinational conglomerate corporation that was founded in Eindhoven in 1891. Since 1997, it has been mostly headquartered in Amsterdam, though the Benelux headquarters i ...

'', ''Canon-Europe'', ''

TomTom TomTom N.V. is a Dutch multinational developer and creator of location technology and consumer electronics. Founded in 1991 and headquartered in Amsterdam, TomTom released its first generation of satellite navigation devices to market in 2004. ...

'', ''

Samsung The Samsung Group (or simply Samsung) ( ko, 삼성 ) is a South Korean multinational manufacturing conglomerate headquartered in Samsung Town, Seoul, South Korea. It comprises numerous affiliated businesses, most of them united under the ...

'', ''

Porsche Dr. Ing. h.c. F. Porsche AG, usually shortened to Porsche (; see #Pronunciation, below), is a German automobile manufacturer specializing in high-performance sports cars, SUVs and sedans, headquartered in Stuttgart, Baden-Württemberg, Germany ...

'', among others. Public architectural lettering projects include the ''IJsei terminal'' 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 ...

(designed with Erik Vos, Het lab) for Benthem Crouwel Architects and city of Amsterdam. Smeijers is a research fellow at Plantin Moretus Museum in Antwerp, Professor of Type Design at the

Hochschule für Grafik und Buchkunst ' (, plural: ') is the generic term in German for institutions of higher education, corresponding to ''universities'' and ''colleges'' in English. The term ''Universität'' (plural: ''Universitäten'') is reserved for institutions with the right to ...

, Leipzig, at the

, and at the

Royal Academy of Arts The Royal Academy of Arts (RA) is an art institution based in Burlington House on Piccadilly in London. Founded in 1768, it has a unique position as an independent, privately funded institution led by eminent artists and architects. Its purpo ...

The Hague The Hague ( ; nl, Den Haag or ) is a city and municipality of the Netherlands, situated on the west coast facing the North Sea. The Hague is the country's administrative centre and its seat of government, and while the official capital of ...

. In 2000 Smeijers received the prestigious

Gerrit Noordzij Prize The Gerrit Noordzij Prize is given to type designers and typographers for extraordinary contributions to the fields of type design, typography and type education. The prize, initiated by Anno Fekkes during the 1996 ATypI conference in The Hague, i ...

, awarded by The

to honor innovations in typeface design and outstanding contribution to type education and writing. In 2016, Smeijers received the Typography Award from the Society of Typographic Aficionados (SOTA). Smeijers was formerly a founding partner of OurType, with entrepreneur Rudy Geeraerts and typographer Corina Cotorobai, stepping down as the foundry's artistic director in 2017. In 2019 Fred Smeijers and Corina Cotorobai partnered to establish a new font publishing label Type By. Smeijers is the author of ''Counterpunch'' and ''Type Now'',

Hyphen Press Hyphen Press is a London publisher of books on design and typography. Hyphen Press was founded by Robin Kinross in 1980, but has published nearly all of its books beginning in the 1990s. Hyphen Press has produced about thirty books on a diver ...

London London is the capital and largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary down to the North Sea, and has been a majo ...

Publications

* Fred Smeijers, ''Counterpunch, making type in the sixteenth century, designing typefaces now'', Hyphen Press, London (1996, 2011), * Fred Smeijers, ''Les Contrepoinçons : Fabriquer des caractères typographiques au XVIe siècle, dessiner des familles de caractères aujourd'hui'', B42, Paris (2014), * Fred Smeijers, ''Contrapunçao : fabricando tipos no século dezesseis, projetando tipos hoje,'' Estereográfica, * Fred Smeijers, ''Kaunta panchi : Jurokuseiki no katsuji seisaku to gendai no shotai dezain'' (Japanese), Musashino University Press, Tokyo (2014), * Fred Smeijers, ''Type Now'', Hyphen Press, London (2003), * Fred Smeijers et al., ''Vom Buch auf die Straße'', HGB Academy of Book Arts, Leipzig (2014), * Fred Smeijers, Julia Blume, ''Ein Jahrhundert Schrift und Schriftunterricht in Leipzig'', HGB Academy of Book Arts, Leipzig (2010), * Fred Smeijers (Introduction), ''Karbid : Berlin, de la lettre peinte au caractère typographique'', Ypsilon Editeur, Paris (2013),

References

External links

TYPE BY website

Bio and fonts on FontShop website

Hyphen Press website

''Idea Magazine'' No. 305
{{DEFAULTSORT:Smeijers, Fred 1961 births Living people Dutch graphic designers Dutch typographers and type designers Design writers People from Eindhoven Academic staff of the Royal Academy of Art, The Hague Academics of the University of Reading Academic staff of the Hochschule für Grafik und Buchkunst Leipzig