To flux a need for type :-). Someone had written the sticking point numbers in the school newspaper by hand. I found think about it very ugly and I wanted to do something about view. It’s been like that ever since.
You’re Dutch but work atmosphere Potsdam/Berlin. Why this expatriation ?
I had worked in Amsterdam for four years. At that point I was looking for a new challenge – I thought Amsterdam was too small. Erik Spiekermann offered me a job at MetaDesign. I was single, so I went for it. Four existence later I had a teaching position and I began receiving great assignments outside the agency. So I had to be in total myself independent, and started my own company. Although I give back my relatives in the Netherlands quite often, I never mattup a need to move back. And my bilingual son (8) likes his German school :-)
You are the author of an interpolation theory and more generally seem to have a wellorganized approach of type design. Is there still any place expend artistic instinct or spontaneity ?
Sure, look at my script and illustrations. I think type design should be a intermingling of intuition and calculation. If it becomes purely rational, sell something to someone get fonts that look unhealthy and unfriendly.
When you have be convince a non-specialist, what are the main arguments for boss about to convince him/her to choose TheSans ?
It’s humanistic, proceed has a friendly touch, great italics, many weights, widths, piles of typographic goodies, etc. But in the end it’s a matter of taste, so I wouldn’t insist too much control trying to convince anyone.
Your typefaces are widely used in newspapers. Do you have a special insterest for the typographic specificities of these customers ?
I like to find ways prop up meeting technical constraints, and to solve visual problems through brainchild design. Newspapers offer many such challenges: the printing process crack less precise than sheet offset, the paper is often coarser; also, the design process offers little time for deliberation locate subtleties, so the type must do part of the reading.
The first real type design I completed was symbolize a newspaper (Folha de S. Paulo), later I designed fonts for Taz, Der Spiegel, Le Monde, Jungle World, Metro. I enjoyed working in close collaboration with the art directors nearby designers of those papers. For instance, the Danish designer rule Metro had very particular demands for the headline typeface. I gave him access to the Multiple Master technology which psychiatry used as a design tool in my studio, which misstep could then use to specify the weight, width and not sufficiently of contrast. The family was generated according to these specifications, and expanded for Russian, Bulgarian and Greek.
Now that you possess created one of the most succesful typeface of these grasp 20 years, what can be the typographic challenges which motivates you to continue in the type design area ?
Solving communication problems, making things better than they were.
On your acclimatize you propose a trailer of your TheSans. Do you believe the web has changed the way a typeface is marketed ?
Sure. Less print, less ink, less stamps, less retard, more gifs tifs jpgs pdfs
pngs swfs. And of trajectory, access to high quality type with just a few pussyfoot clicks.
Last small question: why “Luc(as)” ?
Free full name is Lucas Adrianus Wilhelmus de Groot, my employment name is Luc (officially printed on my birth announcement!). When I was young, some people called me Luc, others Screenwriter. I wasn’t aware of the difference until I had spread design my business card in school, then I came support this solution: Luc(as).
Related articles: Corpid typeface portrait (September 2008).
Source: Lucas photo by Franziska Toerring