After decades of applying my expertise in professional practice, education, and type development, I am now making this experience available through an independent consultancy.
My consultancy combines practical expertise in typography, type design, and font technology with independent analysis. I work with designers, design studios, branding agencies, and organizations on questions ranging from typographic strategy and visual communication to the independent evaluation of digital fonts. By bringing together aesthetic judgment and technical expertise, I provide a broader basis for assessing typographic quality, supporting design decisions, and ensuring the long-term performance of digital type.
For more than forty years, my work as a type designer, software developer, graphic designer, and educator in the Graphic Design department at the Royal Academy of Art (kabk) has centered on typography: as a craft, a discipline, and a fundamental component of visual communication. During that time, I have witnessed profound transformations in the field.
Typography has evolved from a highly specialized profession into a widely accessible practice. Digital technologies fundamentally changed the way type is designed and produced, and artificial intelligence is now introducing another significant shift. These developments create remarkable opportunities, but they also raise important questions about expertise, quality, authorship, and the future role of designers.
My perspective is neither nostalgic nor resistant to change. Typography has always evolved through technological innovation and cultural change. What matters is not whether change occurs, but how we respond to it. As tools become increasingly accessible, the ability to make informed and meaningful choices becomes more valuable than ever.
Discussing students’ work at the kabk
Typography is not simply the production of letterforms or the selection of fonts. It is an understanding of language, rhythm, hierarchy, legibility, culture, history, and the relationship between form and meaning. These qualities cannot be generated automatically. They depend on knowledge, experience, and critical judgment.
A particular focus of my consultancy is the question of how typographic quality can be recognized, evaluated, and communicated. Rather than treating quality as a matter of intuition alone, I explore ways of making typographic judgment more explicit by developing criteria that support discussion, guide decision-making, and demonstrate the value of professional expertise.
Together, we explore questions such as:
• Professional positioning: How can designers communicate the value of typographic expertise?
• Typographic strategy: How can typography contribute more effectively to a brand’s identity and communication?
• Quality and distinction: How can organizations recognize, evaluate, and achieve typographic excellence in an increasingly saturated visual environment?
• Creative direction: How can experimentation be balanced with clarity, usability, and functional communication?
• Typeface selection: How can decisions about type systems, custom typefaces, and typographic frameworks become more thoughtful, consistent, and effective?
• Font analysis: How well are fonts designed, engineered, and implemented? What technical or typographic issues affect their quality, consistency, and long-term usability?
Drawing on decades of experience in type design, education, and professional practice, I offer historical perspective, practical knowledge, and critical analysis. My aim is not to provide ready-made formulas but to help designers and organizations develop a deeper understanding of typography’s role, its possibilities, and its enduring significance.
At a time when visual production is becoming increasingly accessible, expertise is defined less by the ability to produce something than by the ability to recognize what matters. Typography remains one of the most powerful instruments for giving form to ideas, identities, and information. Ensuring that its possibilities are understood and applied intelligently is, in my view, one of the central challenges facing design today.
If these questions resonate with your practice or organization, I would welcome the opportunity to discuss them. You can reach me at <consultancy [at] dutchtypelibrary [dot] com>.
