Gerrit Noordzij, a “Dutch typographer, designer of type, author, lettering artist, and influential teacher”, was born in Rotterdam in 1931 (Sherman). Beginning in 1960, Noordzij “taught writing and type design at the Royal Academy of Art in The Hague”, the capital of the province of South Holland. In addition, “…[he] has worked as a graphic designer for various Dutch publishers”, including the publishing company Van Oorschot, for whom he is the house designer (Devroye).
Noordzij was an assertive force in the writing and lettering program of the graphic design department at the Academy from 1970 until his retirement in 1990. His influence has been passed on to the type community on an international scale through the work of his former students. Additionally, “he…continues to influence new generations of designers, as the method of teaching type design at the Academy is still largely based on his theoretical models, and his writings are still published in a variety of languages”. Perhaps Noordzij is best known for his work, The Stroke: Theory of Writing, which proposes that “type is in its very essence calligraphic,” though Noordzij preferred the term writing to calligraphy. He asserts that “type is inextricably tied to writing…and defines typography as ‘writing with prefabricated letters’”. Furthermore, Noordzij proposes that “handwriting reveals the logical construction of letters, through the dynamic translation, expansion, and rotation that occur when writing with a pen”. Noordzij’s “cube” theory has been a vital influence on type design software like Superpolator, which “aids type designers in generating type families with multiple axes of weight, width, contrast, etc.” (Sherman).
Noordzij has designed numerous typefaces, but very few are available to the general public (Sherman). He also designed what some consider “the perfect font”, known as Ruit, but unfortunately it is nowhere to be found. His two main typefaces that can be found, however, are Ruse and Burgundica. Ruse is “a huge text family that started out based on Gerrit’s own handwriting,” and is published at TEFF, also known as The Enschedé Font Foundry. “The family is divided up into eleven variants of increasing contrast…each variant is available in roman, italic, and small capitals.” Burgundica, published at TEFF in 1983, “emerged from analyzing the elongated version of the Burgundian Bastarda appearing firstly in manuscripts from the calligraphic workshop of Jacquemart Pilavaine in Bergen (Hainaut) in 1450…[Noordzij] adapted the spatial proportions of the calligraphic pattern to the shapes of that typeface” (Devroye). To acknowledge his contributions to the world of typography and design, Noordzij was the first person to receive what has become known as The Gerrit Noordzij Prize, obviously named after himself, in 1996. The award is given every three years and “recognizes writing and teaching as essential qualifications” (Sherman).
References
Devroye, Luc. “Gerrit Noordzij”, http://luc.devroye.org/fonts-24699.html
Sherman, Nick and Angela Voulangas, “TDC Medal Awarded to Gerrit Noordzij”, http://www.tdc.org/news/tdc-medal-awarded-to-gerrit-noordzij/
In addition, we were asked to find images related to our designer. They are shown below:
In addition, we were asked to find images related to our designer. They are shown below:
"TDC Award 2013"
Source: http://letterror.com/noordzij/
Gerrit Noordzij
"Gerrit Noordzij Burgundica"
"Gerrit Noordzij Dutch Postage Stamp 1974"
"Gerrit Noordzij Ruse"
Book cover for The Stroke: Theory of Writing by Gerrit Noordzij
"Noordzij’s concept of translation, expansion, and rotation, illustrated in his iconic “cube” diagram, moves type design beyond debates about serif vs. sans-serif and reveals the endless typographic forms that can be produced when design variables are interpolated"
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