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Why did you become a type designer ? To fulfil a need for type :-). Someone had written the page numbers in the school newspaper by hand. I found that very ugly and I wanted to do something about it. It’s been like that ever since. You’re Dutch but work in Potsdam/Berlin. Why this expatriation ? You are the author of an interpolation theory and more generally seem to have a scientific approach of type design. Is there still any place for artistic instinct or spontaneity ? Sure, look at my calligraphy and illustrations. I think type design should be a mixture of intuition and calculation. If it becomes purely rational, you get fonts that look unhealthy and unfriendly. When you have to convince a non-specialist, what are the main arguments for you to convince him/her to choose TheSans ? It’s humanistic, it has a friendly touch, great italics, many weights, widths, lots of typographic goodies, etc. But in the end it’s a matter of taste, so I wouldn’t insist too much in 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 of meeting technical constraints, and to solve visual problems through type design. Newspapers offer many such challenges: the printing process is less precise than sheet offset, the paper is often coarser; also, the design process offers little time for deliberation or subtleties, so the type must do part of the work. Now that you have created one of the most succesful typeface of these last 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 site you propose a trailer of your TheSans. Do you think the web has changed the way a typeface is marketed ? Sure. Less print, less ink, less stamps, less delay, more gifs tifs jpgs pdfs Last small question: why “Luc(as)” ?
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