“…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

Articles, notes and lettering.

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