Articles, notes and lettering.

“…you can have a randomlogo, a logo that changes itself, moves around the page or tells something interesting about your company” —On Randomfonts, Emigre 18

“…The whole facade consists of twenty-one lines, each 48 meters long. Over a kilometer of lettering! Nothing about this project is small.” —Lettering for the new UvA Library

“By allowing the computer to mess around within the — strictly defined — margins of a virtual font or layout, a new sort of liveliness can arise.” —Jan Middendorp on tools

These are articles on work, records of research, some projects, collections of drawings on one theme or another.

  • UvA Library Lettering
    22 languages, 6 writing systems: a kilometer of lettering
  • HBO Street
    An exclusive typeface for Home Box Office. With Carvalho Bernau.
  • Building a Noordzij Cube
    Practical research in theoretical models
  • On TypeCooker
    A method for drawing and talking about type in class.
  • Lettering
    Refreshingly void of swashery
  • A Useful Guide to Bad Type
    An essay exploring some criteria for type.
  • Toolspace
    Article by Jan Middendorp for the Charles Nypels LettError Book
  • Is Best Really Better?
    Article for Emigre Magazine about RandomFonts and code.
  • On Digitisation
    A practical and statistical approach to digitising type
  • Counting Photons
    How many photons can we see? An exploration of physics and scale.
  • Products of a Thinking Hand
    A book for the Gerrit Noordzij Prize exhibition 2018
  • Fish drawings
    Explorations of fish in graphic form.
  • Signs for Commerce & Industry
    Lettering in an alternative reality
  • Tickets 01-20
    Traveling without moving in lockdown