Automating type design processes

Frank E. Blokland
Dutch Type Library
Play (52min) Download: MP4 | MP3

Not only font production processes can be automated (with DTL FontMaster); to a certain extend also the type design process can be done by software itself. Blokland will give an introduction on the (possible) automation of type design processes and a presentation of the most recent version of the DTL LetterModeller application.

This presentation is partly based on the PhD research on Harmonic Systems in the Latin Script, which the speaker is currently doing at Leiden University.
 
Frank E. Blokland is type designer (of, amongst others, DTL Documenta and DTL Haarlemmer), Senior Lecturer at the Royal Academy of Arts in The Hague since 1987 and Professor at the Plantin Society in Antwerp since 1995. Frank founded the Dutch Type Library in 1990. A couple of years later he initiated and supervised the development of DTL FontMaster, a set of tools for the professional font production, developed together with URW++ Design & Development GmbH.

Currently Frank is doing a PhD study at Leiden University, in which harmonic systems in type and music and the automation of type design processes play a central role.