1274146257
Published: 26th October, 2009
Last edited: 2nd October, 2009
Created: 1st October, 2009
The ‘Sans Serious’ Series is a group of tribute typefaces meant to honor Dutch designer and typographer Jurriaan Schrofer.
Along with Wim Crouwel and Josef Albers, Jurrian Schrofer (1926 - 1990) was among the Bauhaus pioneers of grid-based modular typography and design.
Schrofer's work experimented with type, light, and color and focused on mathematical shapes and pattern.
“Schrofer made several attempts to create complete typefaces - one of which was wittily calledSans serious- but this was never his goal. ‘Is it necessary’, he wrote, ‘to make complete alphabets with upper- and lowercase, figures, diacritics and seriously adorned with a name, when the aim is merely a formal investigation into basic recipes’ Schrofer's domain was never the design of typographic alphabets, to be used by other designers, but always the creation of letterforms ‘made to measure’ as part of his own designs of - mainly - book covers and postage stamps. He created a rectangular alphabet as the basic element of his ever-changing covers - each based of the same grid but colored differently - for a series of scientific books, ‘Les textes sociologiques’ from Mouton Publishers. He made sophisticated pixel-based letters, all drawn by hand, and experimented with photographic screens as a means of distinguishing simplified letterforms from the background. He created logotypes built from custom-made letterforms, based on rectangular grids.”
“In his booklet ‘Letters op maat’ (‘Type made to measure’, 1987), Schrofer presented many of his experimental alphabets from the 1960s and '70s. The booklet was part of a series of goodwill publications edited by Wim Crouwel for Lecturis Printers, Eindhoven.”