Eye Magazine

Erik van Blokland

Recent articles about Erik van Blokland

Postmodern jam session

Issue 83, Summer 2012

Jan Middendorp recalls Fuse, the type ‘magazine’ that opened up (and put the lid on) a transient era of adventurous type design from small digital foundries

Deep in the archives

Issue 75, Spring 2010

Feature

Contemporary type designers Christian Schwartz and Paul Barnes select some historical type specimens that excite and intrigue them.

The old manufacturing companies that dominated typeface production through most of this century have been swallowed and largely pushed to the sidelines, while initiatives in design – and in the terms and routines that condition design – have been made by a few rapidly growing software and computer hardware companies. Pathbreaking contributions have come from small studios or individual designers working, in every sense, from just a desktop. There have been ‘font wars’, corporate piracy and copyright contravention on a large scale. To use the loose terminology by which we attempt to carve up typographic history, it is clear that during the 1980s, the developed world left behind photographic typography (to which metal had ceded) and entered the era of the ‘digital’

Typography’s new priests

Issue 1, Autumn 1990

Review

‘Type90’ brought several hundred typographically preoccupied people to Oxford this summer. Following the successful pattern…

Recent blog posts about Erik van Blokland

Variable grunge

4 April 2023
Design history, Technology, Type Tuesday, Typography

The typewriter typeface formerly known as ‘Trixie’ gets a makeover and a new name: Neither Confirm Nor Deny (NCND). By Paul Barnes

Trixie was perfect for the age of grunge. It became a visual shorthand for typewriters, with the quality of authenticity …

Font Li Beirut – harmony in discord

8 September 2020
Graphic design, Posters, Type Tuesday, Typography

Li Beirut is a unique font – made in a week by 160 type designers – to support victims of last month’s Beirut blast. Nadine Chahine writes for Eye about her Letters of Hope project

On Tuesday 4 August 2020, villages and towns to the north, east, and south of…