LettError

Just van Rossum and Erik van Blokland make up the formidable typographic duo LettError. They both came out of the Royal Academy of Fine and Applied Arts in The Hague, the educational institution in the Dutch capital that turns out type-face designers. Both in their mid-twenties, they have already come a long way professionally. After working at MetaDesign in Berlin for a few years when they were fresh from the academy, they spent time at David Berlow's The Font Bureau Inc in Boston, Adobe Systems in Mountain View, California, and many other type shops. Not always together, but constantly in touch, they have jointly designed typefaces, written programs, created onscreen movies, performed at conferences and generally made themselves known among font mongers, online freaks and ResEdit hackers. Wired sent Erik Spiekermann to meet the two and suss out their take on typography today.

Wired: You made the first "random" typeface, called Beowulf, by replacing the commands "lineto" and "curveto" in the PostScript code with your own command "freakto". The new command calls up a random generator that makes the character outlines irregular. When you created Beowulf, were you trying to prove something, or was it just a joke?
van Blokland: It was quite a joke. We were both into programming - or would you call it hacking? What came of that interest was a very cool-looking thing. We wanted to make a typeface that looked very smooth and rounded off, but instead it became spiky, with little pointy bits sticking out from the edges of each character in a most unpredictable way. And what's the most fun about Beowulf is that every time you print it, those spiky bits take on a slightly different appearance.

You both have said that a designer, by definition, has to make things that haven't been made before. But why? Isn't it the job of the designer to work within a frame of reference which is commonly understood? If we use Egyptian hieroglyphs or Chinese writing here in The Hague, we won't communicate anything. But at the same time, as graphic designers who are trying to innovate and establish creative new ways of communicating, we have to be surprising and invent new images. What does that mean for type? Is it going to disappear or is it going to go back to images?
van Rossum: Type is definitely here to stay. Text won't disappear; in fact, you'll see more and more of it on screens. Images simply aren't strong enough or powerful enough to express everything you want to say. You can't make pictures to replace this interview.

How did Trixie happen? Wasn't it named after the typewriter you took it from?
van Blokland: On the way back from a type conference in 1990, we came up with two ideas for typefaces: we could digitise handwriting and we could use a dirty typewriter. Not long after that, we came up with JustLeftHand and ErikRightHand, which are simply scans of our respective handwriting. Trixie took a bit longer. We found an old typewriter (named Trixie), simply printed out all the characters and then scanned them into our computers. But leaving all the dirt and irregularities in caused problems when we got to production. There were too many points on the outlines, making the files very large and the fonts almost impossible to print.

How about the other fonts you designed, the instant types - from rubber stamps, Dymo tape (embossed label tape), stencil letters and other stuff you found in your attic and then you decided to use. That sounds a lot like marketing: "Let's do something trendy!"
van Rossum: It involved a bit more marketing than Trixie, which was modelled after the only type in people's homes - the typewriter - with its uneven ribbon, filled-in letters and the occasional character that jumped up or down. But in the beginning, there wasn't any marketing idea. I saw this thing and thought, let's make a typeface out of it. Then we decided we needed a complete package, a family of faces. I had a set of rubber stamps I used to play with, and my dad had given me these stencil letters that he used for his architectural drawings. And then someone from FontShop came up with the originals for Karton - letters stamped onto the cardboard boxes from Apple. Everybody recognised the letters, but nobody considered it type. It's always just existed; nobody ever designed it. Now, people like Karton because it looks so ordinary, so modest. It's quite cool to have stuff on your computer that feels so familiar, unlike all that computer-looking bitmap stuff.

This was a hot phase in your life. First, you had a random font that played havoc with its own shape, then your own handwriting, almost unchanged. ErikRightHand and JustLeftHand have become incredibly popular because they happen to be good Dutch handwriting, not calligraphic. They look like the sort of handwriting everybody would like to have if they practiced and could write beautifully. And Trixie, the typewriter face, is the ultimate vernacular. People everywhere still recognise it, although typewriters hardly exist anymore. Everybody still wants to be the first kid on the block to use a new font and when you created Trixie lots of designers rushed to use it. What happens then? Does it become mainstream? Does that kill it? van Rossum: Trixie is mainstream now, and in fact it's so mainstream that we can't stand it anymore. It's been around for at least three years. In Europe, almost all the hip cultural magazines use it when they want to express something that's brand-new, urgent, factual. In the US, it's been used by Rolling Stone and a lot of trendy local publications. When you're a type designer and you find your own typeface somewhere for the first time, it's a nice feeling. It's maybe a little like being a rock star, hearing your song for the first time on the radio. But it's a small and quiet pleasure. Nobody knows. And you know that you couldn't explain it to your friends even if you wanted to. I'm sure that even Sting doesn't know my handwriting is on his album cover.

Can you become famous and rich as type designers?
van Blokland: We would be rich if everybody who uses our typefaces paid for them.

Before the advent of desktop publishing and type-design tools, drawing a typeface could take a few years. It was expensive, time-consuming and boring. But these days, type design is much more accessible. Should every graphic designer have to learn to design typefaces or at least manipulate fonts?
van Blokland: Yes. I call it type tuning. Type is a commodity, a thing that everybody can change. These days, if a designer doesn't like a typeface, it doesn't take long to go into it and change the kerning or the width or the shape of a character. We certainly have the technology, so there's no excuse to put up with bad type.

Erik Spiekermann, who designed the beautiful and practical Meta typeface, began experimenting with type at the age of 12. He now runs a German design firm, MetaDesign.